Avis Benson; or, Mine and thine; with other sketches

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AVIS BENSON,

1MiMilsiie#ciiQi

BALLAHTTNB, HANSON AND CO.
KDINBUKGH AND LONDON

"Tlur ilut down my motJwr wttb mg In hir inni."— J>a^

AVIS BENSON;

OR,

MINE AND THINE.

VRUtf otj^er ftketcj^ed*

BY THE LATE

MRS. E. PRENTISS,

AUTHOK OF " STEPPING HEAVENWARD, " THE HOME AT GRBYLOCK/
" AUNT jane's hero," ETC ETC.

. JUL ' 80

LONDON:
JAMES NISBET & CO, 21 BERNERS STREET.

MDCCCLXXX.

i'^/.

9

SI.

These stories originally appeared in Ameri-
can periodicals, and are now published in this
country, in the belief that the many readers of
Mrs. Prentiss's writings will be glad to have
them.

LONDONi 1880.

CONTENTS.

PAOB

MIKE AND THINE II

SUCH AS I HAVE 9I

HOMEWABD BOUND ....... I05

TAKING FOB GBANTED 121

WHT SATAN TBEMBLES I37

HAVING NOTHING, TET HAVING ALL . . . • IS5

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT 1 73

"on THE BANKS OF THE RIVER OF LIFE'' . . . 185

A MODEL SERVANT I99

PLATING WITH SUNBEAMS 215

SAVED FBOM HIS FRIENDS 229

MINE AND THINE.

( 13 )

MINE AND THINE.

^ Look here, Noll, Mrs. Benson was in last night
after you went to bed, and she says she's a good
mind to send Avis to schooL"

"Ho! that Uttle thing ? "

*' She ain't so very little ; and she's the smartest
creature at her books ! And, NoU, I'm going to give
you two turnovers to carry to school to-day."

Noll expressed his approbation of this generous
decision, by tossing his cap into the air, and by a
contemptuous " Pooh ! "

** Oh, very well 1 I know wholl be glad of them,
if you don't want them."

" You can't come it over me with apple turnovers,
mother," continued NolL "I ain't a-going to be
hired to carry Avis Benson to school"

" Who said anything about Avis Benson ? " cried
his mother.

"Just as if you'd go to ofifering turnovers for
nothing 1 " retorted the boy. *' No, I ain't a-going

14 MINE AND THINE.

to be seen going to school with a girl ; no, not if
you went down on your knees about it."

" If you had a little sister, you'd have to do it,
you naughty boy, you ! How can you be so con-
trary? Poor Avisl If her three brothers hadn't
died, she wouldn't need to be beholden to you, or
anybody else."

Koll made no answer. He could just remember
a solemn, yes, an awful time in his short experience,
when there was a funeral at Mia. Benson's, and
three little cojBSjis were carried out, one after
another, and how afraid he was that there was
something catching inside, and shuddered lest he
should get it, whatever it was.

" All the fellows will laugh at me if I go with a
girV he said.

His mother, perceiving that he was beginning to
yield, hastened to urge on the cause of little Avis.

" No, they won't laugh at you, either. And if
they do, they'd ought to be ashamed. Come, here's
the turnovers ; one's mince, and one's apple. And
here's a doughnut for you and another for Avis.
Now, Oliver Watson I What a boy you are ! Well,
if you eat up your dinner the instant you've done
breakfast, youlL have to go to bed hungry, that's all."

Oliver, who knew how little this threat really
meant, formidable as it sounded, inarched coolly off,
consuming both doughnuts before he reached Mrs.

MINE AND THINK. 15

Benson's. There he found Avis, sitting on the
door-step.

" Halloo, Avis I " he shouted.

Avis made no answer, except by the faintest little
smile which she tried hard not to smUa

" YouVe got to go to school along of me," con-
tinued Oliver. " Your mother says so/'

" No, I ain't a-going to school," said Avis.

At this moment, her mother, a pale, sorrowful-
looking woman, came to the door.

" Yes, ma wants you to go," said she, " and Noll 'U
be good to you — won't you, Noll? Come, here's
your dinner all ready. Give me a kiss and run'
right along."

" No, I ain't a-going to school," repeated Avis.

" Yes, go right along. Ma insists upon it. You
know you promised, last night, that you would

go-
Avis burst into loud cries and tears, throwing

herself into her mother's arms, and cHnging tightly

to her neck.

"There, that will do!" said Mrs. Benson, un-
clasping the little arms ; " now give ma one more
kiss, and go with NolL"

But the screams and cries were only redoubled.
« What shall I do ? " cried Mrs. Benson. " Noll,
you come and coax her."

"I have enough to do with coaxing mother,"

l6 MINE AND THINE.

replied Oliver. "Come, Avis, don't stand fooling
there. We shall be late. I can't wait for you all
day. Just say out and out, are you going, or ain't
you going ? "

"Well, I ain't; there!" said Avis angrily. "I
shan't goes unless ma goes ; so there, now ! "

"Poor little thing!" said Mrs. Benson. "She's
cried herself sick, and isn't fit to go to-day. You
come for her to-morrow, there's a good boy." So
saying, she rummaged in the little dinner basket for
some special dainty with which to entice him to
come again, and drew forth a delicate china cup
containing a custard.

" There, as long as Avis won't go to school, we'll
give part of her dinner to you," she said.

I don't like your custards," said Noll bluntly.
They're skinny. Mother says so, too."

Mrs. Benson put on a meek, resigned look, with
which Noll was quite familiar, and which he hated
cordially.

" I'm glad my mother ain't like Aer," he said to
himself as he ran away. " I pity Avis, I'm sure. I
ain't going there any more."

The teacher of the district school, a young woman
in a faded delaine which once boasted many colours,
received her tardy pupU. with an ominous frown.

"It ain't my fault," cried Oliver. "It's Mrs.
Benson's. She and Avis they just kept me a- waiting

MINE AND THINE. 1/

and a-waiting. And I haven't been late but four
times this week/*

A smart rap on his unlucky knuckles from the
teacher's ferule, was her only reply to this statement
of facts.

"See if I ever go nigh Avis Benson again!"
muttered Oliver, as he marched back to his seat,
with his smarting little fist doubled into a con-
venient form for knocking her, or somebody, down.
"They're all alike, girls are; all they know how
to do is to cry when they're littlp, and, when
they*re big enough to be school-ma'ams, to hit a
fellow for just nothing at alL"

Now, it was the firm intention of Avis to go to
school after a suitable degree of opposition on the
subject, and ^he was not at all pleased when, the
next morning, she saw Oliver march sturdily past
her mother's house without so much as giving her
one chance at a free fight.

" There goes old Oliver Watson ! " she said to
herself. " And he may, for all me."

" There, he's gone and left you, I declare ! " said
Mrs. Benson. " What a naughty boy ! But that's
all in the bringing up. Because he's all she's got,
his mother can't bear to cross his will. Well, ma
isn't going to spoil her little Avis so. Come, you're
to go to school, Oliver or no Oliver, if I have to take
TOu myself."

B

1 8 MINE AND THINE.

" Oh, no, no ! " Avis burst out ; " I don't want to
go ! I can't go ! "

" Well, there now, stop crying ; you know it does
break ma's heart to hear you take on so. It is hard
to go off with other people's boys when you might
hare had three brothers of your own to take you
around."

Now, Avis had heard these three brothers spoken
of in a lamentable voice every day since she could
remember. And she was heartily sick and tired of
it. She was not old enough to know how sorrow
had changed her mother from a blooming, cheerful
young woman, into a prematurely old, sallow, and
pining one. All she did know was, that while a good
deal was said about obedience, nothing was ever done
to secure it, and that with a few tears she could make
herself monarch of all she surveyed.

" It isn't nice here at home," she said to herself,
as her mother, with a deep sigh, went to make some
change in her dress. " I've a good mind to go to
school all by myself. I know the way, and I can."

So, without waiting to make known her inten-
tions, she set off at full speed, never stopping until
she was out of breath, and not a little fatigued.

" I don't see the schoolhouse anywhere," she said
at last, " and I'm sure it used to be right here. I
wish I'd waited for ma. What if I've got lost ?
Well, if I have it isn't my fault. It's all because

MINE AND THINE.

19

that i^ly Olivet wouldn't stop for me this morn-
ing."

She walked on a little further, perplexed, tired,
and hungry ; then she reflected that " ma " would
certainly come to look for her, and that it might
be well to retrace her steps. But no one was to
be seen npon the long, lonely road, and her heart

began to beat fast with terror. " I've got lost ! I've
got U)Btr' she shrieked ont, running wildly this
way and that " Oh, why doesn't ma come to find
me ? And I'm so tired I Ob, dear ! oh, dear
mel"

How often she had seen her mother rock herself
bade and forth, uttering ju3t snch a heart-breaking

20 MINE AND THINE.

" Oh, dear ! oh, dear me ! " and wondered if it was
the headache, or the toothache, or what it was that
ailed her ! But now the sound of wheels was heard,
and Deacon Watson came driving along in his wag-
gon, as jovial and merry as a boy. '

"Why, Avis Benson!" he cried, "how on earth
came you here ? "

" I was going to school, and I got lost, and I'm
so tired," said Avis in a little weak, wailing voice.
" Oh, you'll carry me home, won't you ? "

"Of course I wilL Why, you're as pale as a
sheet. What time of day did you start for school?"

" I guess it was about nine."

" Whew I And its half-past four now. Where
have you been aU this time ? "

But Avis had faUeh asleep, and lay back in his
arms, her face all stained with tears, and her chest
still heaving with sobs.

" She's a pretty little creature," said the deacon
as he drove on. " I wish I had one just like her.
Just like her, all but the spoiling, I mean. She's
an awful spoilt child. But I suppose her mother is
about crazy by this time ; so git up, old Bob, and
let's put her out of misery."

Mrs. Benson was, indeed, in a fearful state, and
had only been kept in her senses by Mrs. Watson's
good common sense.

" Don't take on so," she said, when, after a fruit-

MINE AND THINE. 21

less search for the child, the poor mother had flown
to her for refuge. " There ain't no sense in it
There ain't no bears to eat her up, nor no woods to
get lost in ; I expect she's gone on and on till she's
come to some house, and they've took her in and fed
her, and 11 be bringing her home. La ! there she is
noMT. in my husband's arms ; ah, I knew no harm
had come to her. What would make you take on
so?"

" When you've lost three of them, you'll know,"
returned Mrs. Benson, seizing upon her stray lamb,
and covering it with tears and kisses.

"I ain't got 'em to lose," said Mrs. Watson
somewhat grimly, "but I know one thing, I'd
rather a' had 'em and lost 'em than have been as
I have."

It is said that our friends may be divided into
three classes : friends who love us, friends who hate
us, and friends who are indifferent to us. Mrs.
Watson and Mrs. Benson were friends who hated
each other. They never had had a quarrel ; they
ran in and out of each other's houses with perfect
freedom; Mrs. Watson had the Bensons to tea
very often, and Mrs. Benson had the Watsons just
as frequently. When Mrs. Watson had a felon
on her finger and could not make her own bread,
Mrs. Benson came twice a week to make it for her.
To be sure she would make it d la Benson and

22 mNE AND THINE.

Mrs. Watson ate it with a bursting heart, and
declared it abominable. And when fatal disease
stole into Mrs. Benson's wide-awake home and
robbed it of the three laughing boys that made it so
noisy and so cheerful, Mrs. Watson smothered her
maternal fears for Oliver, and watched day and
night in the sick-room, and offered consolation to
the dying one. Mrs. Benson found all she said a
solemn mockery, and wished people would not talk
about things they didn't imderstand. Mrs. Watson
was very kind, very kind indeed; but then you
know she never lost three children all within four
days of each other !

Mrs. Watson did wish Avis Benson wasn't taught
to say " ma ; " it sounded like a bossy-calf or an old
sheep, or something just as silly.

And Mrs. Benson shook her head, and said what
a pity it was Mrs. Watson's feelings were not a
little more tender, and that Oliver was not obliged
to treat her with a little grain of respect.

Under these circumstances, it was not strange
that the children were not fond of each other, and
that Oliver, brought up by a mother who had never
known a day of sickness or sorrow, despised Mrs.
Benson's watery ways; while Avis, petted and
fondled as she always had been, shrank from Mrs.
Watson's somewhat rough good-humour.

But the Uttle adventure just described brought

MINE AND THINE. 23

a new element into this social atmosphere. When
OUver saw the limp figure in his father's arms, and
looked at the wan, tearful face, his heart misgave
him. He wished he had coaxed Avis to go with
him that morning, instead of stamping past her
house so savagely. And Avis, in her gratitude to
the deacon for coining to her rescue, clung to him
henceforth with an afifection which he heartily
returned.

She hardly remembered her own father ; he had
been dead several years, and she crept into Mr.
Watson's strong arms, and laid her head on his
great, wide breast, with that love of protection ^
peculiar to the feminine naturie.

" She is a pretty little thing ! " he often repeated,
and if Mrs. Watson invariably added, " Yes, but she
is just spoilt," he only laughed good-humouredly and
declared : " But Tm getting fond of her ! "

A wise man has said that " love never needs a
reason." No, it needs no reason ! Its springs often
lie hidden amid inaccessible, far-off mountains, and
it comes down from those heights to " wander at its
own sweet will," and never asks itself, or tells to
others, why its bright waters encircle ragged rocks,
or linger round bare ones, or why it Sometimes casts
itself at the feet of some simple flower whose life it
thenceforth becomes !

( 24 )

II.

** TuYM children's always a-quarrelling," said Mrs.
Watson to her husband, as the sound of angry voices
reached her ears.

"It's aU along of Oliver's being so obstinate,"
returned the deacon. " You never broke his will,
and he expects to have his own way with Avis,
just as he does with you."

" As to that, did you ever break his wiU ? Wasn't,
it as much your business as mine ? "

*' Well, no, not exactly. I always said I could
drive any kind of a team except a team of young
ones. I never pretended that I knew how to manage
Oliver. But as to Avis "

" Yes, as to Avis, you are making a fool of your-
self over that child. It provokes me to see you sit
by the hour together cuddling her up."

The deacon laughed, and made the same old
answer —

" WeU, I am getting fond of her."

Meanwhile Oliver and Avis had " made up," and
were playing together in great harmony. For

MINE AND THINE. 25

though Avis always declared that she couldn't bear
Oliver, and though Oliver maintained that he hated
girls, the children were constantly drawn together by
some mysterious attraction. This state of things
lasted till Oliver's school-days were over, and he had
become a great awkward boy, at that charming age
when everybody pecked at and snubbed him, and
when he was rude and disagreeable in return.

" What's the reason you won't go with me, as you
used to, Avis ? " he asked her, as they met one Satur-
day afternoon near the fence that divided the two
farms. " I never liked you so well as I do now
and you hardly speak to me."

" Ma says you're the rudest, noisiest, tearingest
boy she ever saw," returned Avis. " And at Sue
Hunt's party you tore my dress."

^ I didn't mean to tear it. I shouldn't think you'd
lay up such a little thing against a fellow."

" It isn't a little thing. It was one of my new
dresses that ma made for me to wear when I go to
boarding-school."

" To boarding-school ? You are going away to a
boarding-school ? Well, if that ain't the meanest
thing yet 1 "

He turned away, and went straight home, crossed
the brook, wound up the hill, pushed on and on,
till he found a place remote enough for the explosion,
that had got to come, somewhere.

26 MINE AND THINE.

What right had she to go away, he should like
to know ? And what sort of notions would she get
into her head when she found herself among city-
folks?

He lay upon the grass, anything but an interesting
object, a boy and yet a man, a man and yet a boy,
kicking against the pricks of life, while hardly con-
scious what they were. He only knew that he was
imhappy and out of sorts.

But he had not much time for the nursing of
moods in these days. He had chosen the life of a
faxmer as the life he liked best ; spring work was
hurrying on apace, and was calling for him now.
He got up with a sudden jerk, and was soon en-
grossed with the care of horses, cows, and sheep.

Deacon Watson's farm was large and profitable ;
so was the widow Benson's, and Mrs. Watson had
her own views on the subject. Though she always
spoke of Avis as a spoiled child, she was very will-
ing to think of her as Oliver's future wife, and of the
consequent merging of the two farms into one.

" Mrs. Benson won't live long," she mused ; " she
worries too much. Then Avis will need somebody
to look after her, and why shouldn't it be our Oliver ?
To be sure, he's neither hay nor grass now ; but by
the time they're old enough to be married, hell be
a handsome young fellow, just like his father. La !
how awful fond I used to be of him ! "

MINE ABD THINE.

27

Avis went off to school in great triumph. She
liad been obliged to fight many a battle to gain her
mother's consent to the separation this involved.
Sut in giving way to hei grief as she bad done,
Mrs. Benson had gradually lost her hold on Avis's
affections. To see a &ce always sad and tearful, to
hear such endless dismal aUusions to " your dear pa,"

" your three brothers," had become intolerable. She
wanted to get away somewhere, anywhere, out of
sight of troubla To be sure. Deacon Watson was
jovial enough, and fond of her as if she were hia
own child. But, then, that horrid Oliver ! And
that aharp-s%hted Mrs. Watson, who had only to
look at you to read you straight through, as she

28. MINE AND THINE.

would a book, toss you down at the end, and say,
" Humph ! "

"There's no sense in your taking on so, ma,"
quoth she, as they were packing her trunk together.
"Mary Ann Green will come and stay with you,
and she's twice as good company as I am. And, at
any rate, I shan't be gone long. Only three months."

But the three months, with vacation between, ran
into six months, then into twelve, and Avis, fas-
cinated with new scenes, and used to an obedient
parent, had no intention of settling down at home.
She did not kill herself with hard study, not she,
but learned to dress tastefully, got hold of a little
French and a little music, and took lessons in oil
painting, which resulted in some execrable pic-
tures, which tortured the veiy walls on which they
hung.

At the end of two years she felt she knew all
there was to learn, and was prepared to go home to
astonish everybody with her acquirements. During
those two years her mother had lived ten. She had
continuaUy pined and chafed and moaned, and when
Avis at last came back to her, it was just a little too
late to make amends for all this, and she broke com-
pletely down.

" How provoking ! " thought Avis. " Just as I
was going to begin to have a good time, mother must
needs take to her bed ! " She forgot that she had

MINE AND THINE. 2^

had a good time all her life, and that such times
last for ever with nobody.

"Avis has grown as pretty as a picture," said
Deacon Watson. " Don't you think so, Oliver ? "

*' She looks well enough," was the gruflf reply.

"When I was a youngster," pursued the deacon,
" I wouldn't have lost such a girl for want of asking
for her."

" No, that you wouldn't I " cried his wife. " You
had brass, if you hadn't gold. As to Avis, a pretty
fetrmer's wife she'd make, to be sure ! "

Oliver got up and left the. room. The time had
been when he was indifferent to Avis; then her
name had begun to sound musical m his ear. Now
he could not bear to hear it mentioned, or to men-
tion it ; she had become too much for him. Why ?
When? How? He asked himself these questions
in vain. Why ? Because I do I When ? Why,
always ! How^? I don't care !

He kept himself aloof from her, watching her
from a distance. Conceited though she was, she
fancied that he disliked her. And he was a hand-
some fellow, as his mother said he would be when
he was nothing but an ugly duckling, and worth
flirting with, if nothing more. As he made no ad-
vances to her, she found herself constrained to
besiege him in his own camp.

One evening, when he had just come home from

30 MINE AND THINE.

his day's work, he found her perched, like a bird, on
his father's knee. She at once alighted from this
friendly bough in pretty confusion.

" Excuse me, Mr. Watson," she said, " I had no
idea you were so near." And then she asked him
to accept a little pocket pincushion which she said
she had made with her own hands.

So he was no longer Oliver to her, but Mr. Wat-
son ! And hadn't every girl he knew given him a
pincushion ? She went away discomfited, and he
did not offer to go with her.

" Ma's been longing for you to get home ; where
have you been, Avis ? " asked her mother in a re-
pining tone.

** I do wish you wouldn't call yourself * ma,' " re-
torted Avis. "I've been to the Watsons', if you
must know."

" Seems to me Oliver doesn't come here as much
as he used to," proceeded Mrs. Benson; "I hope
you ain't discouraging him."

"There's nothing to discourage and nothing to
encourage. I don't suppose he's the only fish that
swims in the sea."

" Don't be angry with your poor old ma — ^mother,
I mean. I lie here a-thinking day in and day out^
and wonder what will become of you after I'm gone."

" After you're gone," repeated Avis, with surprise,
" Why, where are you going, mother ? "

MINE AND THINE. 3 1

" Yes, that's the question, where be I going ? I
mean, where am I going ? You mustn't make fun
of your poor ma's grammar, when she's a-lying, may
be, on her dying bed."

Now, if Avis had seen her mother take to her
dying pillow once, she had seen her do so a score of
times. So she was not in the least concerned at
this fresh announcement.

" You've died so many times that when the real
time comes you'll do it to perfection," she said;
laughing.

" I'll teU you what it is. Avis," Mrs. Benson went
on, "I've led a life I'm ashamed of. After your
dear pa, I mean your dear father, died, and then all
those boys I was so proud of, I just settled down to
hug up my troubles and make the most of 'em.
Mrs. Watson, she always laboured with me about it,
but I thought she didn't know what she was talk-
ing of. She kept saying, 'Get up, go round and
look after other people's troubles. Yours ain't the
only ones. There's plenty of 'em everywhere, and
if we all sat 'round weeping and wailing, it would
be a dismal world.' Now, Avis, you mark my words.
When your time comes, and it will come — I've
brought you up so easy that I've nigh upon spoilt you,
and your time'll have to come — don't you set down
crying and moaning. Hunt up poor folks, and hear
what they've got to say about trouble. Go and see

32 MINE AND THINE.

old people that think they've lived too long, and
cheer them up. And if you can't do anything else
for sick people — and I know you ain't strong, I've
brought you up so tender — ^why, carry 'em a smile,
or a flower, or a kind word. It's wonderful what a
little thing it takes to brighten up sick folks."

She lay back on her pillow, quite exhausted by
this unusual effort of a weak intellect Avis went
to her now, roused and alarmed.

" Are you really so sick, mother ? " she asked
more tenderly than she had ever spoken in her life.
• " I thought you ought to know. I hoped I
should live to see you and Oliver — ^to see the
deacon teach you what I'd ought to. Avis, don't
put off getting ready to die as I did. Get ready
now. I hope I'm forgiven, but I don't know. I'm
going off into the dark. Kiss me, dearie."

Poor Avis kissed again and again the lips already
growing cold in death, and then sent a hasty, be-
wildered message to the Watsons. They all came,
fuU of sjnnpathy ; and though Oliver did not speak
a word, the expression of his eyes as hers met his
told his story. It said, " You are going to be left
all alone in the world ; come to me ! "

What a poor little waif she was, to be sure!
For a time there did not seem to be any comfort
for her anywhere. The whole tendency of her
education had been to nurture the selfish element

MINE AND THINE. 33

of her nature, not to eradicate it, and she was fain

now to sit down and represent herself to her own

ccnsciousness as the most afflicted being on earth.

Her dead mother had virtues the living mother

never possessed, and she wept over her very much

as, by example, she had been taught to weep.

" This won't do, little Avis," said Deacon Watson,

when she went to pour •ut her grief on his shoulder.

" You know I love you just as if you were my

own child, and I ain't going to say anything to you

I wouldn't say to one of my own. But it is two

months now since your mother was took away, and

I've never seen you smile in all that time. Look

here, my child. Don't you suppose me and my

wife's had pur troubles ? Why, we've had awful

ones. Sometime I'll tell you all about it But we-

carried them right to the Lord, and He just took

and explained 'em to us. Why, it was beautiful.

*Look here, deacon,' says He, 'haven't I always

treated you like a son I Haven't I always been

tender to you, and generous to you, and given you

all you asked for, and thrown in some things you

hadn't sense to ask for ? ' ' Yes, Lord, it's all true,'

says I, ' but I'm a poor, miserable creature, and the

rod hurts so that I can't help crying out.' * I meant

to hurt you,' says He. * That's the way I show my

love. You were getting too fond of this world, and

80 I tried to wean you from it And if this blow

c

34 MINE AND THINE.

isn't enough I shall send another/ And I said,
* Yes, dear Lord, break me all to pieces if Thou
wilt!' And He did. There wasn't a piece left
as big as a pea. But He came close to me while
He was whipping me, and came so often, that I got
well acquainted with Him, and getting acquainted
is the same thing as loving ; and rather than not
see Him at all, I begged Him to come with a rod
in His hand. My little Avis, poor little girl, can't
you do that ? "

" Oh, no, no ! " cried Avis, shrinking away. The
deacon looked at her lovingly, yearningly, but said
no more.

He knew, and knew well, that the shortest way
to a human heart was 'round by the way of heaven,
and that he must reach Avis through that power,
and, for the present, through that alone.

But he had made an impression on her. She
understood now that his loving ways, the ways that
had always attracted her, sprang from something
purer and deeper than the fountain at which she
had ever drank. His peculiar affection for her had
hitherto excited her vanity ; now it revealed itself
as something supernatural, and not of the earth,
earthy ; for, while she could not understand it, she
found a quality in his strikingly lacking in that
of others. Even Oliver, though he now hovered
around her, did not meet her wants.

MINE AND THINE. 35

" I wish," she said to him one day, " that you
were as good to me as your father."

" I never shall be. Some people are bom to it
and some ain't. The two things I am made for are
to have the best farm in the State and the dearest
woman for a wife."

" Wait till you get her ! " cried Avis, and she flew
away as on wings.

But she found her loneliness almost tolerable,
and, somehow, Oliver's admiration met a want, and
satisfied something in her which she dignified with
the name of a craving for love. While this element
existed in her heart, it was but as an egotism of a
refined selfishness, and it was always asking what
it should get rather than what it should give.

" I'm kind o' sorry you're after Avis Benson so
much," Mrs. Watson said to Oliver. " She's a selfish,
spoiled child, and nothing more. What you and
your father find to like in her I don't see, and never
shalL Nor do I wonder so much at your doing so
either, for he never sees a fault in anybody. Folks
is all alike to him, and he just loves 'em straight
through, and when he come a-courting to me, he
thought he'd found something so good in me that
made him pick me out from the other girls. But
I see it just as plain as day, that if I'd said no, it
wouldn't have put him out at all ; he'd have gone
and courted Amanda tj'ones, or Hannah Stinson.

36 • MINE AND THINE.

But as for you, Oliver, I thought you had more

sense."

OKver vouchsafed no reply, for he was a man
of few words and many deeds, and, withal, fond of
thinking and acting for himself His mother's
opposition was just the stimulant he wanted, and
that very evening he made Avis believe that it was
quite essential to her happiness that he should come
and live with her in her desolate home. People in
the village said it was an appropriate engagement ;
that she was the prettiest girl, and Oliver the " like-
liest " man among them ; and then the families had
been so intimate.

At any rate, this engagement became a marriage,
and the young couple settled down in Avis's home.
Soon the dismal old house that had so long looked
as if it was dying of disease of the heart, put on
the cheerful aspect that youth and health and fresh
paiDt could give it. They fancied that they were
quite happy. Avis said in her peculiar way that
she hoped Oliver would continue to be " good " to
her, and he promised over and over that he would,
without being aware that his goodness was to con-
sist in letting her have her own way in everything,
and in thinking all she said was all-important and
unique. He never whispered to her that she was
to make a slave or a drudjge of herself for him,
though, quite unconsciously to lumself, that was
eTactly what he proposed to let her become.

( 37 )

III.

**I FORGOT to tell you," said Oliver one day at
dinner, " that I am goiag to sell old Whitey. He
isn't worth his feed; and besides, I want a horse
that has got some mettle."

" But I don't want old Whitey sold," said Avis,
a touch of wounded pride in her voice.

« Why not ? "

Avis hesitated. Sure enough, why not ? Why,
because she was piqued at Oliver's saying he was
going to sell the useless horse without consulting
her. But she was only dimly conscious of that, so
she said —

" Because mother was fond of him."

** Not half so fond as she was of old Brindle, and
yet you consented to have her sold."

" Yes, but you consulted me about that."

" Oh, it's a matter of spunk, then, is it ? " asked
Oliver incautiously.

" Why, of course ; I don't want my horses and
cows sold off, and not a word said to me."

38 MINE AND THINE.

" My horses ! My cows ! " The " my " grated on
Oliver's ear.

" I did not suppose you wanted me to run and
ask your leave to sell a good-for-nothing old horse
Uke Whitey."

Avis made no reply, but pushed back her plate
Tfith a warlike air that irritated Oliver, but did
not destroy his appetite. She might go without

her dinner, if she choose to be so silly, but she
should see how little he cared. So there they sat,
those twain who had promised to honour and cherish
eaxih other/in anything but a cherishing mood—
Avis piqued, Oliver defiant. Who was to blame ?
Why, both were in the wrong. In the first place,
Oliver should have been diplomatic enough to let
the proposition about old Whitey come from Avis,
as he could have done easily enough. But when
he had failed on this poiut. Avis should have owned
that she was a silly little girl to mind such a trifle ;
but she did nund it when he enacted sole master of
land and goods won through her, and wouldn't he
another time consult with her before selling off
things ? If she had said this with the pretty air
with which she had asked him " to be goo4 " to her,
who doubts that he would have yielded ?

As it was, seeing no sign of relenting in her
face, Oliver walked off very much out of humour.
And the farmer who wanted just such a demure.

MINE AND THINE. 39

reflective animal as old Whitey, coming to urge the
conclusion of the bargain, Avis shortly saw " dear
mother's favourite horse "^ led off to turn the wheel
of Sam Stover's cider-mill. Indignant tears burst
forth at the sight.

" Poor mother, you did not think your little Avis
would come to this ! " she thought. She cried out
what teara she had for the occasion, and then slipped
off, across lots, to find Deacon Watson, he who had
so often settled their childish quarrels. At supper-
time Oliver went home to an empty house, a thing
not very imusual, since it was understood that the
" children " should come home to tea whenever they
felt inclined. But on this occasion, Oliver perceived
that Avis was avoiding the interview with himself
that must prove embarrassing in their present mood,
and this increased his displeasure. He had half a
mind not to join her at his mother's tea-table ; yet,
on the other hand, he felt that there was nobody
like mother, after aU. So he went across the fields,
and into the kitchen, where he found Avis seated
on a low stool at his father's feet, one of her little
hands buried up in his big ones, and his mother busy
over the fire, very red in the face. He had seen
Avis in. this way scores of times, with nothing but
pride in it, but now it irritated him.

" Is there no one to help you get supper, mother ?"
he asked, in a tone that reproved Avis. "That

40. MINE AND THINE.

■

kettle is too heavy for you ; let me fetch the tea-
pot."

Mrs. Watson gave him a grateful smile. Though
she was dauntless in energy, and proud of her
strength, she had enough of the woman in her to
like to be looked after. And Oliver made an osten-
tatious display of his skill in the culinary line,
which Avis was keen enough to perceive and be
displeased at.

There would have been an awkward scene at
the tea-table, if Deacon Watson had seen, as his wife
did, how things stood between the children. But
all he saw was that the two human beings he loved
best, or at least, next to his wife, had come home,
and so he kept up a flow of genial, kindly talk, that
concealed the silence of the rest of the party.

" Oh, how I do wish Oliver was like his father ! "
thought Avis. " He looks exactly like him, and how
can he, when they're so different ? "

" If Avis loved me half as well as mother does, I
should be satisfied," mused Oliver. " And I do wish
she'd learn mother's way of making bread."

In the course of a few days their mutual disgust
with each other blew over. They fancied everything
stood on as firm a foundation as before.

" It was only a little thing," Avis whispered in
Oliver's ear. " I didn't mind it much."

" Nor I either," returned Oliver. " Another time

MINE AKD THINE. 4 1

well be more careful how we get drawn into such
silly disputes."

" Why, I was not silly ! " cried Avis. " Of course
I had to stand up for dear ma's horse ! " And then
she wished that oflfensive word " ma " hadn't slipped
out.

" You know that was not the point You know
perfectly well, that you were angry because I did
not run and ask you if I might sell him."

"I wasn't in the least angry."

Oliver began to whistle, and Avis began to cry.

" I wish dear mother was alive," she sobbed,

Oliver turned on his heel and went oflf. Avis
washed up the tea-things, looked in the glass to see
if her eyes were very red, and after a little hesita-
tion went to the prayer-meeting, as she usually did
when particularly unhappy. Not that she had ever
found special consolation there, but from a dim, re-
morseful feeling, that if she went there often she
would win the right to feel a little more compla-
cently toward herself. For she was not naturally
conceited, and was fast losing the effect of the flat-
teries she had received at school, imder the sense of
Oliver's dissatisfaction with her,

• At this time the village was divided into two
parties on the subject of a projected railroad.
Deacon Watson objected to it, and had some strong
men on his side. Oliver, on the contrary, full of

42 MINB AND THINE.

youth and ambition, was for pushing the thing right
through; and Avis, in a fit of perversity, had
opposed her husband, and enlisted with his father.
Of course, some hard words were spoken on all
sides, and on this particular evening Deacon Watson
undertook to set things straight.

" Brethren," he began, " it ain't no use for us to
come here and pray together, unless our hearts are at
peace with one another. We've all got a little riled
about that railroad, and maybe we've all said things
we oughter not. I'm afraid 1 have, for one. And
if I have, I'm sorry, and hope youll forgive me."

There was silence throughout the room. Who
had ever heard other than words of love and kind-
ness from this gentle, genial man ? Everybody felt
condenmed at his attempt to assume the sins of
which he was so guiltless. This silence at last
became so oppressive, that the deacon rose to his
feet again.

" I've been thinking," he said, " that what I need
is to have my heart all broke to pieces. When 1
get down on my knees, and the Lord shows me
what a poor sinner I am, and yet is just as good to
me as if I wasn't — I declare I don't know what to
make of it. But when I go back to my work I
feel myself growing lofty again. Brethren, let's get
away down low, among the poor sinners and keep
there. Then when the Lord wants us He'll kno\9

MINE AND THINE. 43

where to find us." There was something inex-
pressibly tender and humble in the way in which
these words were spoken.

"I wish Oliver was here," thought Avis, "and
would take pattern by his father."

But it did not occur to her to imitate him her-
self. She found all the rest of the exercises most
tedious. Everybody who spoke gave the impression
that the road to the kingdom lay through the land
of bemoanings. Everybody complained of a cold
heart, and bewailed the low state of religion.

" What is there in father that is so different from
the rest ? " Avis asked herself before she went to
sleep. "I'd ask him, but he wouldn't know. I
wonder how he keeps himself so sweet and happy
all the time ! It isn't because mother never snaps
him up, for I've heard her take his head right off
his shoulders."

Thus musing she fell asleep, and when she awoke
next morning Oliver had gone to his work. Once
more their quarrelsome humour blew over, and for
some weeks they walked together in a harmony that
both found so pleasant that each resolved to make it
last for ever.

" It is always little things that we fall out about,"
said Oliver. " It all seems so ridiculous afterwards."

Yet notwithstanding the outward peace, Avis was
not at rest. She found Oliver's ambition and in-

44 MINE AND THINE.

cessant stir and bustle a good deal in her way. He
never could find time to read aloud to her, or to
have her read aloud to him, and she had thought so
much of carrying on his education in that way!
And she thought it his duty to go to the Wednesday
evening prayer-meeting, but he always contrived to
have some pressing engagement on hand. She
remembered a time when nothing would tempt
him to stay away from this meeting because she
was sure to be there, and if it was pleasant to be
with her once, why wasn't it pleasant now ?

When, half-crying, she asked him this question,
he laughed at her, declaring that she was no longer
a novelty, and that he liked her better at home than
abroad.

It Was a great relief to her starving heart when
there came to it her first-born son. All that was
sweet and feminine in her came out to meet and
care for this child.

"It beats me out and out," said Mrs. Watson,
"to see Avis with that baby. I always thought she
was nothing but a siUy little spoilt child. But
she'd give her heart's blood to that young one."

" Yes, I'm getting very fond of her," quoth the
deacon.

"You've been going that way so long that I
should think it was about time you'd got there,"
was the conjugal response.

MINE AND THINE. 45

Avis was, indeed, all devotion to her child, who
did not, however, make many demands upon her.
He vegetated on from day to day, a jovial, healthy
boy, who did not know how to cry, and did know
how to sleep. The love she could not pour out on
her husband she lavished on this little idoL Mak-
ing his tiny garments, nursing him to sleep, taking
him home to see grandpa and grandma — ^these were
her apparently innocent joys. Oliver was very fond
of him too, and as baby's face soon began to cloud
and his lips to quiver if mamma's did, papa had to
learn a little more self-control than he had hitherto
done.

( 46 )

IV.

Meanwhile public interests must go on as well as
babies', and Oliver, who had long been called a
" rising man," had risen to the height of his ambi-
tion, and become superintendent of the new railroad,
which was to make him both rich and influential
Intent on her own duties and pleasures, Avis gave
him little sympathy in his new projects, and he
fell into the habit of talking them over with his
mother.

" Mother^ 8 got a long head," he was continually
saying to Avis, in a tone that implied, to her fancy,
that she had none.

" I'd rather have a heart, if I'd got to choose,"
she replied coldly, and then fell to talking nonsense
to her boy in tender tones that she used to reserve for
her husband only. She had been disposed to make
an idol of Oliver if he would let her ; but as he
did not prove quite the ideal husband he had
promised to be in the days when he was seeking
her, she turned her affections to her child. Yet
they had their snatches of pleasure in each other.

MINfi AND THINE. 47

and as soon as the baby got upon its feet, and
Oliver was not afraid to touch him, lest he should
faU to pieces on his hands, the young father became
bery proud of his son and heir. He became a
certain bond of union, for he was a piece of property
in which each had an equal shara Avis had
always been annoyed at a habit Oliver had of
speaking of what she considered her farm as his.
She regarded the property as her own, and consi-
dered herself as most generous in permitting him to
come and live on it with her. He, on the contrary,
felt that she might consider herself as most fortunate
in securing such services as his.

" I think you might say * our farm,' '*^ she said to
him one day when, feeling out of humour, she was
ready to make the first straw she could pick up an
aggressive weapon. " Knowing it is mine, it must
sound strangely to hear you always speaking of it
as yours."

" Then why don't you say * our baby ' instead of
speaking of him as if he were all yours ? However,
such trifles are not worth speaking about. By the
by, did I tell you that old Gleason had subscribed
handsomely to the railroad ? "

" If j^ou've told me once you've told me a dozen
times. Why! if here isn't another tooth! Just
think of it, Oliver, baby's got another tooth ! '*

" Yes, I suppose so," returned Oliver abstractedly,

48 MINE AND THINE.

'' and I can coax him to put down his name for a
thousand more."

Avis turned away in disdain, and after one or two
more attempts to get her to take interest in his in-
terests, he went off, as usual, to somebody who did.

The railroad was at last completed, and if it ran
over a good many prejudices and passions, it did its
work in happy unconsciousness thereof. The value
of Deacon Watson's farm was increased by the new
order of things that supplanted the old-fashioned
ways of the past, and Oliver's was equally so. But
the two men were quite differently affected by this
fact. The deacon, who loved to study God's pro-
vidences as the most interesting book he knew, next
to his Bible, read in this one an invitation to double
all his subscriptions to benevolent objects, and sent
his minister such a present as drove that half-starved
worthy straight to his knees with thanksgivings.
Oliver, on the contrary, opened a bank account in a
neighbouring town, with the triumphant thought
that he was now in a fair way to wealth. His farm,
for he always called it his, to the constant but
secret annoyance of Avis, was in admirable con-
dition, and he whispered to himself that one of
these days, when his father was gone, the number
of his acres would be doubled. So he buttoned his
coat oyer a self-complacent if not a happy heart, and
went on his way rejoicing.

MINE AND THINE. 49

« I wish I knew what ails my baby." Avis said
to him one moming. '' He was very restless last
night."

" Babies always are when they're teething," re-
turned Oliver. " I wish, though, that this youngster
would let me sleep after my hard day's work. You
ought to see the hay we got in yesterday. "Why,
what's the matter now ? What on earth are you
crying about ? "

" I don't know. I suppose I'm nervous about my
baby."

" Why don't you get mother to run in, then ? "

" You always talk as if your mother knew every-
thing ! " replied Avis. " And the fact is, she doesn't
know half as much about babies as I do. She's for-
gotten all she learned when she was young and had
you."

Oliver stood looking at the baby a minute or two,
said to himself there wasn't likely anything ailed
it to speak of, and went off to his work. Yet the
child was really very ill, and when he came in to
dinner, the little creature lay almost unconscious in
its mother's arms.

** Don't take on so. Avis," he entreated, seeing
her distress. " I'll go for mother, and send for the
doctor, and do everything under the sun, if you'll
only stop crying."

But this was a case beyond " mother," beyond the

D

so MINE AND THINK

" doctor," beyond poor Avis's tears and prayers. The
Utile pilgrim was soon to enter upon a journey which
should lead him away out of sight, out of the reach
of imploring hands, out of the hearing of listening
ears. They sat around him through a few hours of
suspense and pain, and then he stole noiselessly away.

And now, when her heart was breaking. Avis did
not fly to her husband for comfort, but instinctively
turned to the faithful heart that had so often warmed
and sheltered her.

" Father ! " she said pitifully, and he took her in
his arms with the old words set to a new and tenderer
tone.

" Yes, dear, Fm getting very fond of you ! " And
then he knelt down, and with tears gave up the
cherished little one to God. " "We mustn't say a
word," he whispered, as they rose from their knees.
" He was God's before he was ours. It's hard, it's
dreadful hard, to say, * Thy will be done,' but we
must say it, every one of us."

" ril never say it, never ! " cried Avis. " It isn't
right to take away all I had. What made (Jod
give him to me if He was going to take him away ?
I never asked for him. God sent him of His own
accord. And it's a cruel, cruel thing to take him
away ! "

« Yes, it is," thought OUver. " There'U never be
any more peace in this house. That baby was all

MINE AND THINE. 5 1

that kept us two together. Don't take on so, Avis,"
he said coaxingly. " I'll try to be good to you, and
make you forget baby."

Avis shrank away.

" Make me forget him ! '* cried ehe. " That's just
the way you men talk. My precious little darling,"
she said, snatching the lifeless form from Mrs. Wat-
son's arms, " how cmild you go away and leave your
poor mother all alone? Didn't you know you'd
break her heart all to pieces ? "

" Don't talk to her ; let her be, Oliver," whispered
his mother. "It's just the way her ma took on
when them boys died. And Avis is going to be her
ma right over again."

The image of Mrs. Benson, withered, yellow,
sighing, weeping, and reading novels, came up un-.
pleasantly before Oliver's vision.

" I'd give all I've got in the world to bring that
baby to life again," he said. " Avis never used to
be a bit like her mother, but if she goes on crying
at this rate, she'll get to be her perfect image. And
doesn't she suppose it's something to me to lose
such a splendid boy ? "

Unfortunately this did not occur to Avis. The
baby had always been to her " my " baby; her own
love, for it seemed so vast in comparison with
Oliver's sentiment toward it that she looked down
upon it with contempt.

52 MINE AND THINE.

"Do go away, everybody!" she said, when all
t^ere was to say and do had been said and dona
"Oliver, you go home to tea with your mother.
I'm going to bed, myself; my head aches, and my
heart aches, and the whole of me aches."

" Poor little girl I " said the deacon. He would
have liked to put her in baby's cradle, if he
could, and rock her to sleep. But she crept away,
and the three sat together in sadness and silence.
Mrs. Watson made tea, and her husband and Oliver
took some, but her own cup remained untouched.
Her heart was aching for her son ; what sort of a
home had Avis made for him, and what sort of a
home was she going to make ? Something was
wrong somewhere, and so she told her husband as
soon as they got home.

But the deacon couldn't see it. He said he hoped
to see a. more submissive spirit in Avis in time ;
" But the fact is, I'm getting fond of her ! '*

Yet he prayed, with sweet, childlike faith, for the
sorrowful little heart, and as he rose from his knees
said, with tears —

" I never had anything come so near me as this.
I feel sorrowful, and beat out, and joyful, all at
onca'*

" I don't see any sense in being joyful," said Mrs.
Watson. " What is there to be joyful about ? "

" Ah, that I don't know. Only I've always took

MINE AND THINE. S3

notice that the Lord wraps up His best things inside
of them that don't look pleasant on the outside."

"Well, I thought you was one of the sort to take
on dreadfully if anything happened to that baby.
Tou seemed all bound up in it."

" So I was. But I don't want to be all bound up
in anything but God. I'm sorry He's hurt Avis and
Oliver, but I'm glad He's hurt me. I needed it."

"I'm sure I don't know anybody that needed
it less. To hear you talk, people would think you
was the very oflf-scouring of the earth, you that
wouldn't hurt a fly ! "

The deacon had long ceased to " argufy " with his
wife, as he called it. He was better at believing
and praying than he was at speech-making. And
when it became necessary to decide where the baby's
little grave should be, and Avis said, of course,
" right alongside of dear ma," he silenced Oliver's
objections by his own acquiescence, though it was an
unheard-of thing to bury a Watson among Bensons.

" Humour the little thing, humour her," he said.
** If it's any comfort to her to have her baby's grave
right under her window, why, let her."

" But the Watsons have always been buried to-
gether," said Oliver. " And I don't want my boy
laid alongside of Mrs. Benson. She'll be crying over
him, even though she's dead. I never saw her when
she wasn't crying, and Avis is going on just like her."

54 MINE AND THINE.

Yes, Avis cried day and night ; she grew thin and
pale, and black circles formed themselves under her
eyes. "When Oliver tried to comfort her she accused
him of never having loved the child ; and when, in
an awkward way, he made efforts to divert her mind
from its sole object of thought, she reproached him
with taking more interest in his railroad stock than
in her sorrow.

And when all this, as well as past habits, formed
by her absorption in her child, drove him to his
mother, she upbraided him with neglecting her when
she needed him most. His life with her became
intolerable, and from a good-tempered, he degene-
rated into an ill-tempered man, and began to find
fault in his turn. He complained that she had lost
all of her good looks; that she took no pains to
please him ; that there was nothing properly cooked ;
and that the house was so untidy that he was
ashamed to let his mother set foot in it. There
came, at last, an explosion, caused by a tiny spark.

" I'll tell you what it is. Avis," Oliver began one
night at the tea-table ; " if you keep up this inces-
sant crying and moaning I shall jump out of the
window. You got along without the baby before
you had him, and I don't see why you can't now.
I'm sure I'd give everything to have him back if I
could, but you see I can't. And to have you going
on so, month after month, looking and acting just as

MINE AND THINE. 55

your mother did, riles me up so that I can't so much
as eat in peace."

Avis responded by a fresh gush of tears, and did
really look so old, so untidy, so woebegone, that she
was enough to try the patience of a better man than
Oliver. " And the bread is sour, too," he pursued,
with growing disgust " I do wish you'd make bread
like my mother's."

" And I wish you'd go back and live with your
mother ! " cried Avis. " You are there half the
time, as it is."

" You'd better take care what you say."

« So had you."

" "Well, this cat-and-dog life don't agree with me,
and I believe 111 take you at your word. How
soon shall I go ? "

" Whenever you please."

** A fine piece of work you'll make of this farm !"

" I'm aile to take care of it ! " cried Avis, rousing
herself. "You'll see now what I've got in me.
You can carry off aU the stock you've bought, and
the mowing-machine, and half of everything."

" 111 make out a list, and divide everything fair
and square," he said. He left the table, and began
to write. His hands trembled with passion as he
did so, for in parting with his wife he must part with
the beautiful farm he had so long spoken of as his.

As to Avis, her sudden fit of anger had subsided.

56 MINE AND THIKB.

and the thought of the lonely, desolate life that lay
before her, made her shudder.

" I wish I hadn't answered him back," she thought.
" What made me ? But it's done, and can't be un-
done."

She cast a furtive glance at Oliver. He, too, had
cooled down, and was sitting in gloomy silence.

" There is one thing we can't divide," he said.

Struck by his manner, Avis drew near.

"Whatisit, OHver?"

" Our baby's grave I "

She started, and cried —

" Oliver ! you may have everythmg else, every-
thing ! the whole farm, all the horses, all the cows,
and I'll go away somewhere to live, only leave me
my baby ! "

In her desperation she had got her arms around
him, and was looking into his face with an appeal-
ing expression that smote him to the quick.

"A man and a woman, who've got a little grave
between them, can't part," he said hoarsely. " It
won't do. Avis."

" No, it won't do ! " she repeated. " I've lived
a year since we first spoke of it."

" So have I. It didn't seem as if there would be
anything left in the world, when I'd lost my little girL"

And so the big boy and his little girl hushed up
their quarrel, and entered upon some festal days

f

MINE AND THINE. 59

that made their home, as they fancied, a sort of
Paradise. Neither of them reflected that no radical
change had been wrought in their characters, and
that misunderstandings were sure to recur when
this new honeymoon was over.

Yet only a few weeks had passed when Oliver,
recovered from his terror at the prospect of losing
wife and lands, began to absorb himself in outside
affairs, and when Avis's grief once more resumed its
sway, making her imdesirable in his eyes.

Things were resuming their old tone, and both
were in fault, when one day, early in the spring,
they were brought together by an event that gave
a shock to the whole community. Deacon Watson
was driving his wife home from a neighbouring town,
and approached a railroad-crossing, just in time to
be caught by the locomotive of a train not due at
that hour. Mrs. Watson was instantly killed, and
the deacon received injuries that disabled him for
life. All petfy squabbling retreated in dismay
before this terrible event. In his grief at the loss
of his mother, Oliver began to appreciate Avis's sor-
row over her baby as he had never done, and Avis
forgot herself, for a time, in her sympathy for him.
She consented, without hesitation, to remove to the
deacon's house, to assume the care of him, and the
new household was soon harmoniously formed.
But Satan himself, as it seemed to her, lost no time

60 MIKE AND THINE.

in bidding her stand up for her rights. "Why
should Oliver have his full liberty, and go and come
when he pleases, while you are shut up with his
father ? He isn't your father/* And again —

" What do you think Oliver is doing now but
taking away the fence that has divided the two
farms, so as to throw them into one ? A fence made
by your grandfather, and renewed by your father !
Much he feels his mother's death ! "

" I'll let him see that if he won't look out for me,
I can look out for myself," she continued, and the
next time Oliver came home to dinner, it was not
ready, and to his remonstrance came the fretful
answer —

" I can't be nurse and cook at once."

And Oliver replied —

" If you begrudge doing for my father the little
he needs, I can find plenty of people who would
think it a privilege to wait upon him. If I had
known you were going to be so selfish," — and then
followed an ominous silence.

( 6i )

V.

The deacon, sitting all day long in his arm-chair,
suffering from the shock of his wife's death, and the
injuries he had himself received, soon caught the
jarring notes that made discord where there should
have been sweet music. For a long time he did
not speak of it to either husband or wife. But he
told the sad story to Him whom he was wont to
consult in every emergency, day after day, lamenting
it in His presence, and praying for his " poor boy,"
his " poor little girl," in tender, pitiful accents.

And at last the time for speaking to them came
on this wise. Oliver had been xmusuaUy thoughtless
of Avis's comfort, and she unusually provoking, and
they had parted in disgust — ^he to deposit money,
she to resume her household tasks.

** Avis," said the trembling voice of the deacon, " it
won't do."

" What won't do ? " she said, approaching him.

"For us three not to live in peace together. I've
been humbling myself before the Lord about it, and

62 MINE AND THINE.

asking Him to forgive me, and to help me to turn
over a new leaf, and He says He wilL"

"Ton can't think how ashamed of myself you
make me feel, when you talk so," said Avis. " If
everybody was like you, we should all live like
angels, and there'd be no need of going to heaven.
But Oliver aggravates me, and I aggravate him, and
I know we don't make a pleasant home for you."

" It isn't that that worries me," said the deacon,
with a quivering lip. " It is sitting here and think-
ing whether it is a pleasant home for the Lord Jesua
And I'm getting so fond of Him."

"A pleasant home for the Lord Jesus !" These
words rang in Avis's ears aU day long; went with
her to her pillow ; rose up with her the next morn-
ing. Her mind ran back to the day when she and
Oliver became one, and entered her mother's house,
there to make for each other a home, without one
single thought that in doing so they were to make
a sanctuary for a diviner resident. She recalled so
many selfish, petty ways of her own, so many of
Oliver's, and looked at them in the light of this
thought, till she felt like going and hiding herself
away to be seen no more. But that she could not
do, and then the idea came to her, like a good angel,
that it was not too late to turn over the new leaf
their father had spoken of.

'^ I have not made a pleasant home for Oliyo;''

MINE AND THINE. 63

she said, remorsefully, to herself, " and I'm afraid I
never can. But if the One father is * getting so
fond of* will come and live here with us, I'll try
and make it a place fit for Him to stay in."

She went about her household tasks with a new
purpose warm at her heart. This home, to which,
in silent thought, she had invited her Divine Guest,
should be graced with that order and neatness she
would choose should reign there were He to be
visibly present. There should be the kindly service
to father that should win his smile. There should
be the loving word to Oliver that would fall gently
on his ear.

But all this, so beautiful in theory, was hard in
practice. " A purpose is not a life." A host of bad
habits met her on the very threshold of her new one.
She found herself idle and listless where she meant
to be energetic and zealous. It was easier to speak
the irritable rather than the conciliatory word. And
she found herself faltering, vacillating, almost de-
spairing.

At the same time she began to mark a change for
the better in Oliver. It was the reflection of her
own improvement; but she did not know that,
because she f oimd more and more to hate in herself.
But it was becoming very sweet to think that in all
she said and did she was trying to please a new and
dear Friend. She caught herself asking Him con-

64. MINE AND THINE.

tinually how He chose to have her to do this or that^
whether she was right here or wrong there, what else
there was she could do for Him ; and the more she
forgot herself, and gave up her own ways and plans,
the more peaceful, the more happy, she grew. In
her simple life there were no great events ; her
battles, when she fought any, were with very little
things, but little things make wondrous combinations.
The avalanche that destroys a whole village is made
up of single snowflakes that come down on noise-
less footsteps. The honey that fills the hive was stolen
from ten thousand flowers. Blessed is the sphere
of woman I She need not go abroad for work, nor
lift up her voice in the streets. Let her be only a
flower, full of sweetness, and the bees will fiild her
out, plunge into her bosom, and carry sweets away.
Ah, how much the Bible means, when it says, " It
is more blessed to give than to receive ! *' And now
let us look into some of the homely details of Avis's
new life.

She had inherited from her mother an inordinate
love for novel-reading, and all other books were dis-
tasteful to her. But here was Oliver's fether,
sanctified by suffering, and with heavenward glances
that made such reading insipid, needing the use of
her eyes every day. Once she would have said
that it was bad enough to have to read aloud, with-
out being restricted in her choice of books. But

Us.

BONE AND THINE. 65

now she yielded, gracefully and kindly, and then
came the reward in elevated tastes. What she
read from courtesy she began to appreciate and to
love.

Then there had been a sore spot about her mother's
arm-chair. She thought that because it had been
her mother's seat through so many years, it belonged
to her as a matter of simple justice. But from the
outset, Oliver always planted himself in it whenever
it seemed most sacred to her, or she fancied herself
most fatigued. He often wondered, when she gave
him an unpleasant word, what he had done to deserve
it, for his selfishness toward his wife was more
thoughtless than wilful. But she gave up the chair
now, and found in doing so that she was not feeble
or in need of a luxurious seat, and that there is no
repose like that of a peaceful conscience. Then as
to the bread — what a triumph over herself she gained
on the day that she surprised and delighted her
husband by making it as the late blessed Mrs. Wat-
son had done ! It may be necessary for a man to
go to the stake. For a woman it is enough to re-
nounce the precepts and the example of her own
mother for those of her husband's.

But it will be objected, " This little wife is losing
her individuality, if she ever had any, and is becom-
ing, not everything to all men, but everything to
two. Is she not training her husband to increase of

£

66 MINE AND THINE.

selfishness, and to that tyranny to which men are
prone ? "

It is true that if, at the beginning of her married
life, a woman yields to her husband a weak, nndis-
criminating subservience, she will lower the tone of
his character, as well as that of her own. But no
man can walk, hand in hand, with a wife who yields
not to him but to God, whose docility is that of a
sanctified heart, without becoming himself elevated
and ennobled.

Let us look into the matter a little more closely.

" Do you mind my going to spend the night with
Mrs. Lane ? " Avis asks,

" Yes, I do mind it. I hate to have you wear
yourself out over that sick woman, full of whims as
she is."

"All sick people are full of whims. And I
don't mind hers in the least. And it doesn't wear
me out ; you know I shall come home in the morn-
ing as bright as a dollar."

" Well, I'm getting ashamed of myself. You do
all the nice, kind things, and I sit by and look on.
What's got. into you?" He gets out the sleigh,
wraps her in the buffalo robe, almost teases her with
anxiety lest she should take cold ; and as he carries
her over the snow to their friend's door, he says —

" Now promise me, little girl, that you won't tire
yourself out, and that you won't undertake to walk

MINE AND THINE. 6/

home in the morning. Ill come for you bright and
early."

And then he goes home, and sits over the fire
with his father, and they fall into pleasant dis-
course, first about the dear little wife, and then
about the dear Friend who had changed her so.

"She hasn't spoken a word about it to me,"
Oliver says seriously. " I had no idea what had
got into her."

"Don't let her get ahead of you," the deacon
replies. "A man and his wife oughter keep step
with each other."

"Yes, that's so," Oliver assents. "But it* is
easier for women to be good than it is for us mea
It seems to come natural to Avis, now she's got
started. But I shouldn't know where to begin."

Yet he proves that he does know, for an hour
later, when stillness had settled down upon the house,
he kneels, for the first time in a good many years,
beside his bed, and asks that the secret taught
his little wife may be taught to him. And he is
thoroughly in earnest in his prayer, for an amended,
ever amending life has preached to his heart, and
taught him to believe in Jesus Christ, and in the
power of His gospel and His grace. So true it is
that no one runs the heavenward race alone; but,
as has been quaijj^ly remarked, "when He says,
* Draw me,' He adds, * and we will run after thee.' "

68 MINE AND THINE.

But all Oliver's habits were against him. He
had fairly compassed hims^ with worldly cares
that withstood him at every point. He not only
owned more land, and more productive land, than
any man in the country, but he owned more railroad
stock, and more bank stock. Nothing could go on
but he knew all about it, and nothing prospered in
which he had no hand. He was public-spirited,
and was always getting up schemes for the general
good ; now he had a project for a course of lectures
that were to complete the education of the rising
generation; now a scheme for introducing water
into every house ; and next news, he was impressed
with the fact that the Bev. Abraham Penfield was
getting old, and that it was time to gather him to
his fathers, and find a miraculous young man to fill
his place.

"It's all doing and no thinking," the deacon
whispered to himself. "It ain't good to be so
awfully busy. One thing is, he has to be two men
instead of one, all along of my being so helpless ;
but that ain't all of it ; he is stirring by nature, and
never was one of the sort to sit still two minutes
at a time."

" I want to have tea right away," Oliver broke in
on these reflections. " I'm going to have the choir
meet here to sing. That will pl^e you, father, I'm
sure."

MINE AND THINE. 6g

It did not occur to him to add that this was
Avis's proposition ; and she was wiUing to let him
have the credit of it. It certainly made a delight-
ful evening for the patient old man, who lay back
in his chair listening to his favourite hymns, with
happy tears rolling down his cheeks.

" It's just next to going to heaven," he said, as
Avis was preparing him for the night, " I don't
know what I've done to make the Lord so good to

me.

" And I'm sure I don't know what / have, either,"
said Avis.

" I guess it's just His way," said the deacon.

«I wish it was His way with me," said OUver,
when his wife repeated these words. "But you
and father seem to have all the good times to your-
selves. I thought if I had the choir here, and heard
so many hymns sxmg, I should get into a good
frame against to-morrow. But I got to thinking
about that fellow, Josiah Sweetsir. He cheated me
on that last yoke of oxen. Letting alone you and
father, and a few of your set, I don't see that church
members are any better, when it comes to a trade,
than people who make less pretence."

" I think we ought to judge a church by the best
people in it," replied Avis. "Besides, when two
men have a piece of business between them, I sup-
pose one of ttiem*always gets the best of it. And,

70 MmS AND THINE.

this time, why shouldn't it be Josiah/ instead of
yon ? "

" Wellj I have the name of being good at a bar-
gain, and it isn't very pleasant to be come round by
such a fellow as Josiah Sweetsir. Fll be even with
him yet, though, you see if I don't"

He sat up late looking over his accounts and so
slept late next morning. Avis had to go to church
without him. This was nothing new, but it gave
her unusual pain, because he had promised to turn
over a new leaf in this respect, and she had really
seen in him a desire for a new life.

" We must pray more for him," the old deacon
said, " And as to patience, we can't have too much
of that. When I think what the Lord Jesus has
to put up with in me, I feel like putting up with
everything in everybody."

And when Oliver found that neither his father
nor his wife uttered a word of reproach to him, he
felt greatly ashamed.

^.

( 71 )

VI.

♦* If I live tiU next Sunday, 111 go to meeting all
day," Oliver said to Avis. " If our minister was
only, a young man, it wouldn't come so hard as it
does now."

" I'm sure I never could look up to and love a
young man as I do* Mr. Penfield," said Avis, with a
sigh. " But if anybody else would suit you better,
I'm sure I haven't a word to say.*'

" He puts things in such a melancholy way. It
is a good deal as if when a fellow is going to start
on a voyage, feeling as most young fellows would,
somebody should come and put his hand on his
shoulder, and say, * Everything looks very fine and
prosperous now; but you must not forget for a
moment that your ship may spring a leak, or take
fire, and then what would become of you ? ' You
won't pretend that that would help to mAke the
voyage pleasant ? "

" Something would depend on what the voyage
was for."

72 MINE AND THINB.

" Well, allow that it is for pleasure. There's no
harm in that, is there ? '*

" We Ve sprung a good many leaks in our voyage,
yoimg as we are,*' replied Avis.

" But we haven't gone to the bottom."

"No, but if we had never had anything to set us
to thinking, perhaps we should. You are so well
and strong, and have so many irons in the fire that
you have hardly any time to think. And it is a
good deal so with everybody else in the village/*

" Yes, 'most everybody is running and racing like
a loose horse," said the deacon. "Sunday comes
once a week and hitches 'em up, or they'd run them-
selves to deatL"

"For all that, I think the Beverend Abraham
might be a little wider awake," returned Oliver.
" And when a man's been hard at work all the week,
he wants his Sundays to be a rest to him. But Mr.
Fenfield always harps on things that ain't pleasant"

" His sermons comfort me," said Avis. " When
I am listening to him I feel as if I didn't care what
happened to me, if I could only be good."

" Well, you ar^ good ; there's no two ways about
that."

Avis shook her head, and the old deacon said
gently, "There is none good but God." And,
after a pause, he added, "I kind of think— of
course, it don't become an old man like me to he

MINE AND THINE. 73

positive — ^but I kind of think that sometimes when
we don't like our minister, it's because we ain't up
to him. He's travelling on the way to heaven, and
so are we, but we've let him get ahead, and he seea
things we can't see; and when he says he sees
'em we say we don't see 'em, and so they aiu't
there.*'

** Well, now, take his sermon this afternoon," said
Oliver in a confident tone. " He says the best thing
that can happen to a man is to have some great
misfortune to bring him down. I caU that sheer
nonsense. It's just as if you should say to a tree,
* Here you are, growing up straight and strong and
green, but that isn't good for you, and I'm going to
take my axe and cut you down.' "

"I never was good at argufying," replied the
deacon. " But I'll say this : If there wasn't ever
a tree cut down, what should we build our houses
and bams with ? And if the Lord never cut a
man down, where should we get people to comfort
us when we're in trouble ? You've heard me tell
about them awful times when the Indians used to
go prowling round, so that the men never dared to
go to their work without taking their guns with
*em, and how they shot down my mother with me
in her arms, and killed or carried off half the
women in the village. There wasn't a house where
there wasn't weeping and wailing. And such a

74 MINE AND THINE.

spirit of love broke out there, you never see. Great
strong men got together and laid their heads on
each other's shoulders and cried like girls. And
them that had lost the most was the kindest and
the tenderest among 'em. One man was stripped of
everything. They murdered his wife, they tortured
and carried off his daughters, they burnt down his
house. And he grew so sweet, and tender, and
loving, that them that hadn't had half his trouble
went to him to be comforted. The village was full
of brothers and sisters; you would have thought
they hadn't had but one father and mother among
*em. And when the Lord had brought 'em all down,
He came and lifted of 'em up. You never see such
times. They all turned to Him just as a lot of
frightened little children run to their mother. And
He spread His great white wings over 'em all, and
just gathered 'em in."

Oliver listened in silence, while Avis quietly
wiped her eyes. The sorrow that had moved him
for a season, and then taken wings and flown away,
had left the print of its heavy footstep on her heart
She imderstood Mr. Penfield's teachings as only
those could do who could say, " I have been brought
low and He helped me." And the thought of
driving this good, patient, hard-working man away
was very painful to her. Long after the rest of the
household were asleep, she lay and pondered over

MINK AND THINK. 75;

her husband's growing dislike to one for whom she
felt an ever-growing love.

" It seems hard that when religion is nothing to
Oliver, and everything to me, he need mix himself
np in parish matters," she thought. " But if he says
Mr. Fenfield must go, go he wilL He's at the head
of everything, from the railroad down to the very
bread we eat. And when I married him I thought
I was BO condescending because I had learned a little
French, and a little music, and a little painting ! "

She seized the first opportunity when they were
alone together to pour out all these anxieties intx)
her father's ear.

" Well, dear," he said, " there's no use in opposing
him with words of our'n. We'll just go to the Lord
about it. He loves our minister, and He'll keep him
here, unless he has got some better place for him."

*• You speak as if you were so sure, father."

" Yes. You see I'm getting very fond of Him.
And setting here all day lohg with idle hands, I get
to thinking about Him till He seems as near as can
be. And when you get so near you can see just
how good He is ; and before He speaks a word you
can tell what He's going to do by things He's done
before."

" But Oliver has got such a wilL"

''Maybe he has. But it ain't nothing to the
Lord's. He can topple a man's will right over by

y6 MINE AND THINE.

just a breath. He can take a man that's numing
one way as hot and eager as if his life depended on
it, and turn him right round, just as eager to run
the other way. Don't you be afraid. It'll all come
right."

Avis stood in thoughtful silence. She had no
such strong faith, and could not understand it.

" I wish I felt as you do, father," she said at last
" But it don't seem as if such prayers as mine could
have anything to do with God's will ; persuade Him,
now, to let Mr. Penfield stay. I don't so much won-
der at your expecting Him to answer yours."

" You see, dear, when I was first set in this chair
and was told I'd got to stay in it all the rest of my
life, it come hard to me. I was well on in years,
but I was just as lively and fond of work as ever. I
liked to use my limbs just as a boy does. And when
I was knocked to pieces, and what was left of me
was set in this chair, says I, * Now, deacon, you're cut
off from your work, and you'll have nothing to do
but to pray from morning till night. You've always
said you wished you had more time to pray, and
now you've got it.' Well — ^well, so I had got the
time, but I hadn't got the spirit. When I'd prayed
for a while I was all beat out, and couldn't say
another word. Well, I turned it over and over in
my mind, and I asked that wonderful Man that used
to pray whole nights at a time, what the matter was.

MINE AND THINE. 7/

Says He, * You take it for granted that a man can
make himself pray, and there isn't a man in the
world who can. You stop goading yourself up, as
you used to goad your oxen, and leave it all to me.*
Well, I did. I said, * Dear Lord, I'm a poor igno-
rant old sinner, and I set here with nothing to do,
and I want to spend my time praying ; but I can't.'
And then He opened my eyes, and I see the whole
thing. He wanted me to say, ' I can't,* and as soon
as I said it. He said, * But lean ! * Ever since that
I know I shall get what I ask for, because I know
my prayers are not mine ; they're His ; don't you
see, dear ? And I'm getting so fond of Him ! "

Avis did not quite see, yet her faith was strength-
ened, and she felt some courage in asking that Oliver
might be led to value their pastor as she did, and
not raise a party against him.

" I'd ask Mr. Penfield to come to tea some night,
only I should have to invite Mrs. Penfield too," she
said. "Wouldn't you like to have him come,
father."

" Yes, dear. And don't you be prejudiced against
Mrs. Penfield. She means well."

" I daresay she does. But shell be sure to say
something Oliver won't like. I don't know what
the reason is, but she always dries me all up. She
is so solemn, and so prim, and talks so like a book.
I suppose it is because I'm such a bad girl that I

78 MINB AND THINR

don't like to hear her repeat verses from the Bible,
and talk about being consistent."

Something like a smile played around the deacon'C
lips for a moment, and then he said —

" We must take people as we fend 'em. It takes
all kinds of trees to fill the woods. Mrs. Penfield
lives up to all the light she's got I expect things will
look different to her some time. She thinks now it's
her duty to speak what she calls a word in season to
everybody. She's got a plan about it in her head."

" Yes," said Oliver, who now came in to tea, " she
loads herself up with just so much shot, and you
hear her go bang ! bang ! bang ! and then she quits
the field without any game. When I was a boy I
hated her like the mischief. I never went there on
an errand, or met her anywhere else, that she didn't
ask me where I expected to go to when I died."

" We've got to be so brimful of love to the Lord
Jesus that we run over," said the deacon. " And
love doesn't make anybody hate us. And I don't
think anybody '11 hear us go * bang ' after that."

"We shall get rid of her when the Eeverend
Abraham departs," said Oliver, looking mischievously
at Avis. She coloured, for she felt angry and hurt
at his speaking thus. The hasty answer rose to
her lips, and flew from them before she had time to
think. Oliver was quite ready to retort, and they
were fast veiging toward one of their old disputes,

BONE AND THINE. 79

when Avis suddenly became silent Oliver looked
at her curiously.

" I wish I knew what has changed her so," thought
he. " How much nicer it is than it used to be when
she always must have the last word."

" I am sorry I was angry with you/* she said.
" It was very wrong. But you know how kind Mr.
Penfield was to us when baby died, and, somehow,
when you make fiin of him it seems to hurt baby,
and that hurts me."

One of those sudden revulsions came over Oliver,
for which we can account on no human grounds.
He knew he had been most to blame, yet here was
his little wife asking his pardon. And she had
given him such a good supper ; just such things as
his soul loved, made after his, not her, mother's way ;
it was a shame to tease her so.

"She shall keep her minister, for all me," he
thought. And so he told her that night before he
slept.

" I've given it all up," she replied, " if some one
else could do you more good."

" It isn't so much the good I'm after. I do not
mean to say I don't care for that, to be sure. But
I want to be interested. I want to hear something
new, not the everlasting old story, over and over."

" The * old story ' has begun to sound new to me
lately," said Avis. " And it is as sweet as it is

80 MINB AND THINE.

new. Sometimes I think I'd like to go about tell-
ing it to everybody."

" I hope you never will," said Oliver nervously.

She looked up into his face, with a smile that
said she wasn't going to do that, or anything else
he hoped she wouldn't do.

" I know an old story that's begun to sound new,"
he said, looking down lovingly into the bright facfe ;
" an old story that's as sweet as it is new."

And so that cloud blew over, and Mr. Penfield
never knew on what a very little point his fate
had himg. Oliver had not much education from
books, but he had a good deal of the sort men pick
up among men, and it was quite true, as Avis had
said, that he could drive off their minister if he
chose to use his influence in that direction. And
now what made Avis stop short in the midst of her
discussion? What was the hidden spring of her
humble apology; an apology on which so much
turned? It was the question that had so often
wrought both inward and outward change :

" Am I making this a pleasant home for the Lord
Jesus ? "

And surely He who condescends to our low
estate is willing to abide where this question is
asked, even if no perfect home is ever ofiTered Him
by poor human hearts.

( 8i )

VIL

Not long after this event, which, though trifling in
Itself, was an event in Avis's quiet life, a little tre-
mulous wail of surprise from not " my baby," but
*^(ywr baby,*' announced a new life in the house.
The newcomer was received with far more deKght
than even. their first-born, Oliver had been capti-
vated by a brace of boys belonging to a friend and
neighbour; these sturdy youngsters were quite a
difterent aflfaur from the infant he had been afraid
to touch, and he realised now that all sturdy young-
sters must first be wailing babies. Avis received
her new treasure with a chastened joy that lay
deeper than her passion for her lost darling, yet was
less consuming, for she held it lightly, as a treasure,
perhaps, lent, not given. The old deacon looked on
with gentle, genial smiles ; the new happiness steal-
ing into the household was filling his loving heart
with gratitude and peace.

"It is a mysterious Providence," said the
Reverend Mrs. Penfield to her husband, " that keeps

the old deacon living on so. Mrs. Watson looks

F

82 MINE AND THINE.

very delicate, since the birth of her infant, and
when I urged her to resume her class in the Sunday
school, she said it would be impossible, because the
care of her father was becoming almost as great as
the care of her chUd/'

"Of course, she ought not to undertake any
other than the work that lies at hand," replied Mr.
Penfield. ^I think it quite enough for a woman
to be a good mother. And as to the deacon, dear
old man, I bless God every day that he lives. I
beUeve this church owes more to him than to any
of us."

" You are so peculiar," replied Mrs. Penfield.
" He used to be tolerably active before his accident,
but he can't go round among sinners now, and I
tjiink it's an awful thing to outlive your usefulnesa.
I hope I shall not outlive mine."

** I hope not, my dear. But I wish I could con-
vince you how much we owe to the deacon for his
example and his prayers. I believe he was never
so useful in his life as he is now. He has a faith
in prayer that puts mine to the blush, and a sweet,
tender love to Jesus that stimulates mine whenever
I approach him."

" He is broken down a good deal; he used to be
80 rough and noisy."

" It is not so much breaking down as sofbening
and refining under the influence of his protracted

MINE AND THINE. 83

sufferings. It is beautiful to see how he behaves
and quiets himself like a little weaned child."

*' But he doesn't labour with sinners/' persisted
Mrs. Penfield. ** I sent Rachel over there yesterday
(she has shown such obstinacy and hardness of heart
lately that I have thought of dismissing her), and
he never said a word about her sins."

"What did he say?"

** He only took hold of her band, and smiled, and
said, ' Well, my child, you see how happy a poor,
sick old man can be I '"

''I can imagine just how he said it. And, you
may depend upon it, he asked to have the right
word given him, and had it given." '

"You grow more peculiar every day," was the
reply, and Mrs. Penfield hugged herseK in her own
narrowness, and went her way. And this way was
to the kitchen, where she found " Eachel," a young
girl whom she was trying to " bring up," crying over
the ironing-table, and scorching one of the reverend
garments of the family.

" What is the meaning of this ? " was asked in
severe tones. " Is this the reward for all the good
advice I have given you? What are you crying
about? Have you been reading a novel? And
look at this shirt! Scorched till it is ruined!
Bachel, I really cannot allow things to go on so
much longer. You and I shall have to part,"

84 ^OKE AND THINE.

. " I didn't mean to scorch it. The tear& got into
my eyes and blinded *em so I couldn't see. . And I
Ain't been reading no novels, either."

" Then what are you crying about ? "

" I don't know, exactly."

" Tou* do know i I insist on being told/'

A burst of tears was the only reply.

" I declare, if you haven't set the iron right down
6n the ironing-sheet and burnt a hole through 'to
the blanket ! "

"I'm very sorry. I'll never do it again. It's
all of the old deacon. To see him setting there,
looking so white, and hear him say how happy he
was ! And Fm young and strong and active, and
yet ain't happy. No, not one bit or grain."
• " I rejoice to hear you say so. No one can ex-
pect to be happy who is at enmity with God."

" I ain't at enmity with Him. And it don't do
me a mite of good to talk to me so. It makes me
show all my grit."

Mrs. Penfield sighed and look resigned. Bachel
seized her iron and went to work with a nervous zeaL

" I don't know what to do with you, you hard-
hearted girl," said Mrs. Penfield after a time, " I
am really afraid your day of grace is over."
. " Perhaps it is."

" And don't you know where you'll go . if you
persist in your present course ? "

MINE AND THINE. 85

" I suppose I do."

" Then why don't you turn from it ? "

No answer.

" I repeat, why don't you turn from it ? "

Still no answer, but furious ironing. Mrs. Pen-
field left the field with a flushed face, and pro-
ceeded to her husband's study.

''I shall have to part with Eachel," she said.
" She grows more impertinent every day, and her
hardness of heart is dreadful"

" I am sorry to hear it," was the reply, " for Mr.
Watson was asking me only yesterday if I knew of
a little girl who could relieve his wife of some of
lier new cares, and I thought of EacheL She could
hold the baby and wait on the deacon and do many
such things."

" She is a very capable girl/' said Mrs. Penfield,
^ but she tries my patience so that I shan't mind
parting with her. I wish you would call her into
the study, and labour with her before she goes."
Mr. Penfield obeyed, and a few tender, kind words
unlocked the poor girl's heart.

** I ain't had a minute's peace," she said, " since
the old deacon spoke so good to me. It made me
want to be just like him. But I didn't know how,
and I was unhappy, and cried, and then I scorched
a shirt, and Mrs. Penfield, she "

" Mrs. Penfield has long cared for your soul, and

86 MINB AND THINE.

sought its best good. But she says you have been
impertinent and careless."

" Yes, I have. She kept firing at me till I got
ugly. But if I can go and live in the house with
the old deacon, maybe the sight of him'll do me
good."

The transfer was made, and Bachel fancied she
had got to heaven. She certainly was on the way
thither very soon. The atmosphere of love and kind-
ness and forbearance in which she found herself
soon began to show its effect upon her, and under
the old deacon's quiet influence she learned to live
a new life.

Some months later, hearing of this, Mrs. Penfield
remarked that she had not, after all, laboured in
vain.

Meanwhile the "young deacon,** as his father
playfully called him, was maturing in all sorts of
sweet baby-graces, making the house vocal with his
gladsome voice, and every heart warm with his
winsome ways. But just when he reached the age
when his little brother died, he was suddenly seized
with symptoms of his fatal disease. This time,
Oliver's distress was almost as great as was that of
Avis. His heart had been growing wanner under
an almost imperceptible, but sure Christian progress,
and this child was far more to him than his fiirst-
bom son had been. And he dreaded the tearful

MINE AND THINI. 87

months that he fancied would follow its death. It
was a time of sore suspense aud distress. The old .
deacon sat in his chair, and wept with them. The
baby was the human " lands(Jaj)e of his Ufa" Every
day developed some new feature, offered some fresh
variety, to his monotonous day. Yet his tears were
not so much for himself as for his children ; he had
gradually, and with sweet docility, laid so many
things at his Master^s feet, as they were called for,
that it would be comparatively easy to lay there one
more of the blossoms of faith; But it is not easy
to see those we love suffer ; we bear their burdens
more painfully than we bear our own. And as
long as we live in this world we shall be human
beings ; sometimes, very human.

" Dear Lord, look at 'em," he whispered, " look
at my poor boy and my poor girl Don't be too
hard upon 'em. Temper the wind to my shorn
lamb, my dear little girL Couldn't a little more be
laid on me, and so let them go ? Dear Lord, they've
lost one; mayn't they keep this? But I am an
ignorant old creature; it isn't for me to dictate.
No, I don't even want to give hints. What do I
know about it ? Thy will be done ! "

Such simple, childlike little prayers stole out of
his heart on noiseless footsteps; on unseen foot-
steps they crept to the ear of Him who is " touched

88 MINE AKD THINE.

with the feeling of our infirmities," who never will-
ingly afficts nor grieves, and was only now trying
the faith of these young creatures by lifting a rod
He did not mean to use. The baby came back to
them, dearer than ever; but it was to yet more
chastened hearts, not to foolishly elated ones.

" I'd like to go about and tell everybody all I've
seen in this house," said Eachel, who, having cried
herself sick with grief, was now crying herself well
with joy. " I never see people behave so quiet that
felt so bad."

Oliver was the leading mind of the village, and
could not help knowing it. But a little child had
led him now into depths of experience never before
penetrated. That week of suspense taught him
lessons he never forgot, and made him take a stand
before the public as a Christian man. Avis went
on her way with a glad heart ; its selfishness fleeing
before the Divrue Guest; whose presence she was
always invoking, and happiness flowing in as fast
as that flowing out. The dear old father lived
many years ; lived to see boys and girls sport about
his chair,, and his children rising up to call him
blessed. He lived to see the Spirit of God respond
to his tender pleadings for scores of human souls
who found the way to heaven through his gentle
guidance. He lived to die as a good man should,

MINE AND THINE. 89

self-renoimoingy self-distrusting, self-forgetting, a
very child in his sense of his own attainments, a
veiy soldier of the cross, in the reality of his achieve-
ments. " And devout men carried him to his burial,
and made great lamentation over him."

SUCH AS I HAVE.

( 93 )

SUCH AS I HA VE.

Chaeles Emmet, after the usual number of haps
and mishaps in that line, had at last sailed into the
quiet haven of married life and cast anchor there.
Everybody congratulated him, for he had won the
girl of his heart. Everybody congratulated her, for
she was to walk the earth hand in hand with one
of the best specimens of manhood, and to become
refined and elevated by her love to him and his to
her. At least, such was the promise the unknown
fatute seemed to whisper in her ear. Why sh6uld
she challenge this promise ? Thousands had seen
it fulfilled; thousands had passed, in ennobling
transition, from bride to wife, from wife to mother,
from mother to serene, happy old age, celebrated
the silver, then the golden wedding, and at last
dropped anchor once more, but this time '' within
the veil.**

But in the great drama of life we never know
whether we have come to see tragedy or comedy.
We see the bridal pair come down the aisle with chas-
tened joy on their faces, we see them pass out into

94 SUCH AS I HAVE.

the world husband and wife, and then we must sit
down and wait to learn what is going to happen
next, and whether our smiles or our tears will greet
them. Are we not always more or less sad at the
bridal, because of the curtain that hides the future ?

At all events, at this festival we may well be
prophetically sad.

The young husband and wife are soon to part
company — he to go up higher ; she, for a time, to
disappear in a sunless valley.

**How can I give you up ? " she asks him on her
knees. " What will there be to do, what to live
for, when you are gone ? "

** And how can I leave you alone, my poor little
defenceless lamb ? " he rejoins.

But the inexorable " It must be I " comes in and
parts the twain. He goes up and goes on; she
seems to go down and to make no advance.

She is a Christian girl, and though she goes down
into a valley darker than death — for it is a small
thing to kill the body in comparison to eating all
the vitality out of the soul — after a time she emerges
from it ; for she has found other sufferers there, and
has learned that what appeared to be a solitude 19
peopled with quivering human souls. She has her
sorrow, so have they ; she sheds tears, but they weep
too ; she is lonely and desolate in her grief, but so
are they in theirs. She begins to be less absorbed

SUCH AS I HAVE. 95

in her own sad story, and to listen to the eventful
histories of her fellow-sufferers. And now comes
the query, ** What can I do for them ? "

To use a homely expression, she takes account of
stock, in order to find out what her possessions are
before she begms to give.

And, in the first place, she finds that she is not
rich in money.

They had started together, she and her Charles,
with very little besides their youth and their faitL
If, out of her scanty stock, she undertakes to give
silver and gold, it must be on a small scale and in
self-deniaL But this self-denial she is willing to
faca

In the next place, she has no brilliant talents.

She will never preach consolation with the tongue
of the learned, or attract attention out of a narrow
sphere. Not many, therefore, will stop groaning
and murmuring, to hear what she has to say.

Not has she vigorous health that would enable
her to be the skilful nurse she woidd gladly become.
When she goes to the sick-room it must be as a
star of smallest magnitude, not as a sun. But she
consents to ^ fill a little space, if God be glorified."

But, on the other hand, she has a warm, loving
sympathising heart. It has grown supple under
discipline, and tender under the rod. She has heard
of " the sacred duty of giving pleasure ; " and since

Q6 such as I HAVE.

she feels herself incompetent for higher service, she
consecrates herself to this. So she carefully counts
up the ways in which this duty may be fulfilled,
and finds, to her surprise, that its name is legion.

We say of the human smile that it is instinctive.
It is from no sense of duty that a baby gives it as
a welcome home to his mother. But when he has
become a man, and perhaps welcomes her to his
home, his smile has become transfigured into some-
thing of which a little child is incapable. There is
a conscious love and conscious expression of it. And
now, when Agnes Emmet rose imrefreshed from her
lonely pillow, it cost her an effort to give even so
much as a smUe to those who greeted her on her
waking. It was so easy to say, by her manner of:
entering the breakfast room, " Because I have had
a tearful, wakeful night, I do not care how I lower
upon my family. Why, when I am in pain,, should
I be trying to give pleasure ? Such a task is too
trivial."

But it did not look trivial now to try to give
pleasure. Word and tone and glance of the eye had
their sacred mission to perform ; if she could not
speak weighty truth, she could give the kindly, the
welcoming, the reassuring smile.

And if she could not go to the hospital with
stronger, more favoured sisters, to bind up bleeding
wounds, she could touch and bless bleeding hearts

ii..

SUCH kS I HAVE. 97

by the loving word, the sympathlBing clasp of the
handy that the poorest^ the most unlearned, can give.
Let US watch her progress through a single day.

She begins it with the firm resolve that in its
coiuse she will do something to beautify some other
life. She has too poor an opinion of herself to ex-
pect that this will be some great, marked service,
that will attract attention and elicit gratitude. She
does not hope to come down on the parched earth
in showers, but she does hope to sparkle one drop
of dew, on at least one leaf or flower. Perhaps all
she does, imder the weariness with which she begins
the day, is to try to repress or conceal that weari*
ness and to speak a cheering word. And we are
none of us too insignificant to cast a shadow or fling
sunshine over those with whom we dwelL All life
touches and moves life. The canary in his cage,
whom we admire more than we love, for he is iu-
sensible to caresses, can yet, if he ails and droops
and becomes sUent, affect our spirits. And this is
but a faint image of the impression of a mother's
heart when her joyous boy hangs his head, and his
incessant, lively prattle becomes an ominous silence.
The human heart was made by so delicate, so cun-
ning a hand, that it needs less than a breath to put
it out of tune ; and an invisible touch, known only
to B. o™ e^«»,:,uess, may ^ aU i.. tf^
bells to ringing out a joyous chime. Happy he,

98 SUCH AS I HAVE.

thrice blessed she, who is striving to hush its dis-
cords, and to awaken its harmonies by never so
imperceptible a motion I

Our Agnes, then, has begun her day in no magni-
ficent parade of glory ; she has only come down to
breakfast with a kind thought in her heart that
makes her face pleasant to look upon. She has
given such as she has — no more, no less. She has
met with some verses full of Christian faith and
hope, that she is sure will delight a poor woman
who lives in a tenement-house, and up too many
flights of stairs for her to climb very often. Other
people, who knew that she was in sore trouble, gave
her both money and good advice. But she received
neither with the glow of pleasure with which she
took from the hands of the postman the copied lines
that implied that she had as tender a heart as
women above her in social position.

After the verses were copied and sent oflF, Agnes
was called upon by a friend, who presented her with
some choice fruit, such as her delicate health re-
quired. Her thanks were warm, and what they
ought to have been. It is not gratitude we want
when we do, or try to do, kind things. We want
some proof that we have given the pleasure we
aimed to give. And Agnes was learning not merely
to enjoy favours, but to let her friends see that she
enjoyed them.

SUCH AS I HAVE. 99

" If you are quite willing," she said, after admir-
ing this basket of fruit, *' I should like to share this
gift with a friend. He is a lonely old man, and so
deaf that I cannot make him hear a word I say,
though he does hear others whose voices are
stronger."

Permission was given a little ungraciously.
When shall we become noble enough to let our
friends enjoy themselves in their own way rather
than through our prescriptions? But Agnes did
not observe this, and by and by the poor old man,
lying despondently upon his bed, was warmed and
vivified by the bunch of grapes, not so much because
they were grapes as because they said, " You are
not so lonely and forgotten as you fancy. One
fidend, at least, has remembered and cared for
you.'*

And now Agnes begins to flag. She has used up
about all her strength, and has to go and lie down.
It is hard for young people to have to take care of
themselves. Liberty is as natural to them as to
sportive animals and little children. She felt it
now. She would have liked to be strong and well
and to run to and fro like other girls, for alas, poor
child, she was only a girl still ; a married wife, a
widow, and yet a graceful, tender, lovmg girl, as
fond of being caressed and petted as ever, yet robbed,
on the threshold of life, of the manly heart that had

100 SUCH AS I HAVE.

cherished her. She felt unutterably lonely and sad
as she lay there mth her hands lying idly by her
side. What were those once busy hands good for
now?

" Are you able to see a visitor ? " was asked just
here. " Your cousin, Grace Leigh, has come."

** Yes, certainly ; let her come up here, pleasa''

She pushed the sadness that lay uppermost down
into the depths of her heart out of sight ; it could
and would come up again by and by, but it
shoiddn't annoy dear Grace now.

Grace was full of petty trouble, and wanted no-
thing better than a sympathising listener. Though
she was • a lovely, attractive woman, somehow only
the women seemed to find it out ; and here she was^
beautiful to look upon, with soft eyes that won your
heart and soft hands that you loved to clasp, but an
established — shall we apply the words to such a
vision ? — old niaid I

** I am so glad to see you I *' said Agnes. *' I was
Ijring here with nothing to do and longing for the
right friend to come in. And you are just the veiy
one. I was thinking, not half an hour ago, how
dearly I loved you ; I don't believe I ever told you
half how dearly ; did I?"

" Why, no ! " was the surprised answer ; and if
Grace was an old maid, and rather a tall one at
that, she got right down on her knees by Aglet's

SUCH AS I HAVB. lOI

conchy and their hands met in such a clasp as they
never had before in all their lives.

" You can't think how much good you've done
me," she went on, "I felt wofully out of sorts
when I came here, and as if nobody in the world
cared for me. You have had a great sorrow, I know ;
I don't mean to undervalue it ; but Agnes, dear, I
really and solemnly believe that

' ' Twere better to have loved and lost *
Than never to have loved at alL'

I have been so hungry I I think if I had ever
won a heart and had the first place in it for an hour,
I could have died of that ecstasy, or if not, that I
could have lived on the memory, the delicious
memory, of it all the rest of my days ! "

The soft blue eyes filled with tears for an instant
and then she went on.

^Perhaps it is silly in me to come and confess
all this to you ; but somehow it has done me good ;
and I don't want you to fancy I am a poor, disap-
pointed, sentimental old woman. I seldom give
way as I have done to-day. And no doubt He who "
said it was not good for man to be alone, sees some
exceptions, and that mine is one of them. So kiss
me now, and 111 be gone."

She whispered a few words in Agnes's ear and
rose to go. They were the very words her young
husband had often whispered, kneeling just so by

102 SUCH AS I HAYK

her side. She realised how little her cousin knew
their sweet meaning, and that made her say —

" Don't go. Let us have a long, good talk. Tell
me all about your poor folks, and your mission work,
and everything."

Grace was only too happy to do it. The cloud
on her brow passed away, and as she went on with
her story, she began to realise that if there was
loneliness in her life^ there was also richness and
fulness there.

"A great many people rise up and call you
blessed," said Agnes, after listening nearly an hour
to an animated, often amusing description of her
cousin's work.

"Yes, we old maids have leisure to look after
other people ; and sometimes I think, though I'm
not sure about that, that a lonely heart has more/
room in it for God than a full one. At any rate
you love me, and I'm going away to feast upon that"

" What little crumbs are a feast to some people,"
thought Agnes when she was again alone. " Who
would have believed that Grace Leigh, beloved and
admired as she is by old and young, could be so
humble as to stoop to pick one from my hand I "

She felt rested now, and the consciousness that
just by being loving she had made the burden of life
a little lighter for her cousin, made her own easier
to bear. Still, when she joined the family in the

SUCH AS I HAVE. IO3

evening, she felt disposed to the silence and moodi-
ness that is apt to possess those who are suffering
either mentally or physically. When asked about
her cousin's visits she answered, at first, in mono-
syllables, and as if annoyed at having her sanctuary
invaded. But was this the way to give pleasure ?
she asked herself. The thought roused her, and
she repeated all the incidents of the visit that
could possibly interest the family circle. It is
said that "words make us ten enemies where
deeds do one." Is it not equally true that words,
rather than deeds, win friends for us? Are not
kind, affectionate words the coin with which we
buy just such words ?

One might go on painting these homely, every-
day scenes indefinitely. But enough has been done
to give a timely hint to some of the lowly ones in
our homes, who, feeling themselves of little worth
there, have never tried to exercise the gift possessed
by every human being, however obscure. We live
in a strange, eventful world, and at every turn meet,
even when we know it not, with hearts that are
starving for the loving word we might speak, aching
with a pain our sympathy could alleviate, lonely
with a loneliness we could dispeL Who has not
seen, in woodland rambles, the huge, unsightly
fragment of rock made beautiful to the eye by the
ready grace with which Nature trails over it deli-

104 SUCH AS I HAVE.

cate vines^ and springs forth from its crevices in
cliarming ferns and tender blossoms, till its rugged
form for ever loses its sharp outlines ?

And is it not worth wiule to possess this fairy-
like hand? May not those who find themselves
obscure and useless, and sigh for a vocation, find this
one of the sweetest, though one of the simplest, on
earth ?

At any rate, Agnes Emmet has made it hers, and
her heart, in ministering in lowly ways to others,
has found what it was not decking for itself: the
. fountain of youth, of rest, and of peace ; for if it is
a " sacred duty ** to give pleasure, what shall be said
of the sacred pleasure of giving it ?

HOMEWARD BOUND

( 107 )

HOMEWARD BOUND.

IE good steamer ''Aurora " was making her home-
trd trip across the Atlantic, and her passengers
jre preparing to set foot once more on their native
L The voyage had been prosperous. There had
311 no rough winds, and but little sickness ; agree-
le acquaintances, that promised to become lifelong
3ndships, had been formed; and during the few
UTS now to be spent together, everybody was bent

showing his best side. If there is test of char-
ter in place and circumstances, it is a sea-voyage.
e real self, the mean and paltry, or the benevo-
it and the noble, is forced to declare itself. And
Dse who had persistently looked out, through the
yage, for Number One, who had been taciturn,
d moody, and unlovely, now, inspired with the
3spect of relief from the monotony of the past
weeks, were eager to retrieve their characters

speedily as possible. Children who had been
jated as cumberers of the ship, if not of the earth,
>re now indulged with lavish greetings. Those
10 had looked daggers at each other across the

I08 HOMEWARD BOUND.

table, where two palates coveted the same dish, now
bowed and smiled, and suddenly grew well-bred.
People are thrown together at sea in somewhat of
the free-and-easy way that makes picnics so unre-
served and so significant in their results; and if
Mr. Long did learn to despise Mr. Short, he also
learned to think Miss Medium Height the most
charming maiden he had ever beheld; while that
young lady was fain to become the adored of the
contemned youth, according to the almost universal
law of cross-purposes. And while there was no
plan laid to that effect, cliques were formed and
adhered to as if this voyage of two weeks was to be
the veritable voyage of life.

" How depressing it is," remarked one young lady,
** to meet with invalids when one is travelling for
pleasure ! We have been fairly haunted by that
Mr. Grey and his mother. We met them first at
Nice, and he looked at death's door then. I cannot
imagine what kept him alive. Then he turned up
at Florence ; and when we got to Bome^ there he
was again. And I declare, when I came on board
the steamer last week, and saw him promenading
the deck with that pinched, hungry look oil his face,
I thought I should give up ! "

"We met him, too," was the reply. "But I
shouldn't speak of him so much as looking pinched
and hungry, as resigned and patient. Sick people

HOMEWABD BOUND. I09

do get. that look. It seems to grow on them; it's
a kind of a graft, I imagine ; for, of course, it isn't
natural to people to be patient."

^How the sea air does take out one's crimps !"
cried the first speaker. Miss Welford, whom it is
time to introduce. " I shall look like a fright when
I land. How do you manage yours ? "

^It manages itself. Nature keeps me crimped
both in season and out of season. I happen to
be in the fashion just now, but next news I shall
be weeping for the straight locks of an Indian
maiden. Let's have a game of cards."

" WelL It will be a cheering spectacle for those
Greys. They're such narrow, bigoted people! A
few evenings ago mamma asked them. Out of mere
good-nature, to join us in a game, and they had the
efirontery to decline, on the ground that they never
played cards. Of course, it was nothing less than
a reproof to us ; and mamma resented it accord-
ingly.'*

** I d(m't see that it was a reproof."

**Now, Edith Lemoine, how just like you that
is I Whatever one says, you always take opposite
ground. If I should say that Mrs. Grey is not a
fassy old woman, you would declare that she is."

Miss Lemoine smiled

<< Considering the difference in our tastes, and
that you and I are both strong-minded girls "

no HOMEWARD BOUND.

"Speak for yourself. Ill not own to being
strong-minded."

" Only to being a little self-willed," said her
mother, looking as if she found that quality a
wondrous grace. " I don't care if I join you girls in
your game. I've got rid of a couple of hours over
a stupid novel, and I believe I've slept oflf a couple
more. How that everlasting Mr. Grey does cough !
I really think people so far gone as he should stay
at home, and not shock one's sensibilities by going
round looking like spectres."

"I pity his poor mother," said Miss Lemoina
" He is her only son and all she has left. I sup-
pose you have heard his romantic story?"

" As to that, we all have our romantic stories."

" But we don't all go into consumptions over
them. And this is really a very interesting romance,
at least, what I know of it. The girl he loved died
five years ago, but he has been faithful to her
memory ever since, and now he's dying, poor
feUow."

" It is a very weak-minded thing to do," declared
Mrs. Welford, yawning and looking at her watcL
"He ought to have found another girl, and got
married and settled down. Eeally, my dear, you
seem vastly interested in him ! For my part, I've
no sympathy with your lackadaisical, broken-hearted
people. And as to these Greys, they're a pair of

HOMEWARD BOUND. Ill

prigs. You should have seen the air with which
they declined to play a harmless game of cards ! "

" Well/' said Miss Lemoine, " I don't care what
you call them, but I like them. The care she
takes of him ! The love she pours out, yes, just
pours otU on him ! And his respect and love and
gratitude for her are just as beautifuL It makes
me wish I had a mother."

" Eather an imgrateful speech, after all I've done
for you on the voyage ! " said Mrs. Welford coldly.

** So it was, and I was sorry the moment I had
uttered it ! " was the frank reply. " You have been
very kind and I have been very ungrateful. But I
suppose we all have our moods. And sometimes I
am in the mood to be made a little girl of in the
way Mrs. Grey makes a boy out of her six-foot-
high son. It is very silly in me."

Mrs. Welford and her daughter exchanged
glances, which were lost on Miss Lemoine : for at
this moment there was a little bustle near them.
Mr. Grey had fainted and lay in his mother's arms
like one dead.

"Come away, girls," said Mrs. Welford, rising.
"I really believe we shall have a burial at sea;
and they say it's an awful scene."

But one of the girls was already out of hear-
ing.

** How can I help you ? What shall I do for

112 HOMEWARD BOUND.

you?" whispered Miss Lemoine to the agitated
mother.

" Oh, if youTl step to my state-room and bring
me the little flask and glass you'll see there.
Henry, darling, you haven't gone and left your
mother without saying good-bye ? "

She spoke tenderly, but not passionately. Miss
Lemoine marvelled at the composed tone, and 'kept
on marvelling at the quietness and self-control with
which the exhausted young man was soon brought
back to life.

" I thought rd got my furlough and was oflF," he
said, with a smile, as the colour, what little he had,
poor boy, began to return.

" I almost hoped you had, dear child." As she
spoke, her eyes and those of Miss Lemoine met, and
she read in those of the young lady a sort of horror
and disgust.

** It will be comparatively easy to suflTer when I
suffer alone," she said, in reply to this look. " Un-
less you have been very ill yourself, you can form
no conception of what my dear son is undergoing.
Such exhaustion is harder to bear than pain. It is
like death ; but it is not that blessed messenger.
There is the distress, but not the relief."

Miss Lemoine was silent. The thought of death
was most repugnant to her ; she could not think of
him as a '' blessed messenger." Yet she lingered

HOMEWARD BOUND. II3

near the Greys with the true womanly sympathy
that is the badge of most of her sex, and with a
vague desire to show what she felt And as she
stood and watched the mother's hand caress the
dying son, a thrill of pain shot through her heart as
she reflected that no maternal caress had ever been
hers ; that her life had been won through the death
of a gurl not older, not more ready to die, than her-
self. For outwardly worldly as she was, she had a
heart with a sanctuary of its own ; if neither priest
nor sermon had consecrated it, that was not quite her
fault.

" You wUl soon be at home," she said at last ;
"and once there, Mr. Grey will be free from the
discomforts incident to travelling." The young man
smiled and said softly, and rather to himself than to
her, " Yes, at Jumie ! "

Mrs. Grey caught his meaning, though the girl
did not. She knew that their homes were to lie in
different lands — ^hers amid dust and heat and cross-
purposes ; his amid peace and rest in the Lord.

" Upon my word, you are the strangest girl I ever
saw ! " exclaimed Mrs. Welford, when she next met
Miss Lemoine. " How could you hang over that
young Mr. Grey so ? "

" I pitied him with all my heart," she replied.
*' I don't suppose there's the least chance of his ever
getting well ; and he's so young ! And his mother

H

114 HOMEWARD BOUND.

will be left entirely alone. And to be alone is so
lonely ! ''

And as if the utterances of these plaintive words
had suddenly revealed to her the emptiness and the
solitude of her own heart, the girl crept away to her
state-room, threw herself upon her bed, and wet her
pillow with her tears. " What is the matter with
me ? " she moaned ; " I am young, and strong, and
well ; I can have everything I want ; and yet here
I am, crying my life out." And then there flashed
through her mind a few words she had met with in
a story that day. " Only God can satisfy a woman ; "
and she stopped crying to ask herself if this could
be true, and if here was the explanation of the insati-
able hunger of her heart. But, as she had said, she
was young and strong, and so she soon fell asleep,
and slept on, soundly, till midnight. Then she was
awakened by the soimd of many feet hurrying about
on deck, and of confused cries and shouts. She
started up in great bewilderment, and ran out into
the saloon and into a scene of the wildest dismay.
Women and children were running about, or were
clinging to each other in hopeless, tearful, pallid
groups. Everybody's real character was coming out ;
people were pushing past each other and getting, in
each other's way, each disposed, apparently, to sacri-
fice all the lives on board, if that were necessary, in
order to secure personal safety. " What shall / do ?

HOMEWARD BOUND. II5

What will become of me ? " seemed the thought of
each.

" Oh, what is the matter ? " cried the trembling
girl again and again, before she could get the appal-
ling reply —

*• We are on fire ! "

At last she found the Welfords, under whose care
she was returning home.

" Oh, here you are ! " cried Mrs. Welford ; " I had
quite forgotten you. Only to think of all our lovely
Paris dresses being burned up ! Mr. Welford says
We may have to take to the boats, and that we can't
carry our trunks with us. And there are Mr. John-
son and those Greys going about talking to people
as if the judgment day had come ! "

Miss Lemoine at this moment caught sight of
Henry Grey. His pale face was illumined with a
celestial glow, as he spoke to the group about him
of the dangers and the hopes of the moment —
danger to the body, hope for the souL

" To those of us who love the Lord Jesus it is
only getting home, to be with Him a little sooner
than we had expected," he said ; " and we shall find
that He knew we were coming, and had made every
Jreparation for us."

" But oh, Mr. Grey," said one, " what of us who
don't love Him ? What will become of us ? "

For answer he feU upon his knees, and those

Il6 HOMEWARD BOUND.

within reach of his voice fell upon theirs. And
more than one soul, borne upon the strong wings of
his faith, gave itself away to God in those awful
moments when the help of man was vain.

Edith Lemoine's was one. Unconsciously to her
the Holy Spirit had been preparing her for this
tragical scene, and now, when there seemed but a
step between her and death, the heavens were
opened — she saw within the veiL And they who
have thus seen God, cannot describe what they have
seen. Finite words cannot define the infinite.

Meanwhile, in spite of reassuring messages from
the captain to the contrary, the fire went raging on,
and the danger was rapidly becoming more imminent
One boat-load of terrified human beings had already
set forth, and an eager crowd was contending for
the second. Mr. Welford had seen his wife and
daughter safely off, and now came hurriedly to Miss
Lemoine.

" There is no time to lose," he said ; " come this
instant ! "

She looked at Mr. and Mrs. Grey. Exhausted
by their sympathy for others rather than by terror
for themselves, they sat side by side, hand clasped
in hand, silently praying for those who were too
bewildered to do more than weep and lament

"Are you going with me, Mr. Welford?" she
asked.

HOMEWAKD BOUND. 11/

" No. Men will not be permitted to leave the
sMp till all the women and children are off. Come
this instant!" Then, seeing Mrs. Grey with her
helpless boy at her side, he added —

** I will see you to the boat, also, madam."

" I cannot leave my son," was the reply.

" Surely no one would refuse Mr. Grey a place
in the boat, ill as he is," said Miss Lemoine.

"He could not bear the exposure of an open
boat this cold night," said Mrs. Grey. "Do not
think of us, dear young lady. We are safe in God's
hands; and if we go home, it will be together.
And I have made myself so miserable, at times, in
looking forward to our separation ! I never thought
Grod would be so merciful ! — ^would give me such a
joy!"

" I insist, ladies, on your both taking to the boat !"
said Mr. Welford decidedly. " It is my duty to act
for you, since your wills are paralysed."

" He is right, mother," said Henry ; " and if you
will not go without me, I will go too."

" Oh, my boy, let us die together ! "

" We have no right to insist on dying. Think,
mother, our lives belong to God, not to ourselves.
And you may yet do for Him some of the work I
have so longed to do."

With a groan, the elder yielded to the decision
of the younger, and in a few moments the sick man

Il8 HOMEWARD BOUND.

and the two ladies were lowered into one of the last
boats.

The faint dawn of day was just beginning to
illumine the sky, and to make the picture of the
burning steamer a little less ghastly. " If the sun
rises, Henry may survive this day," was the fond
thought of the mother, as she enveloped his emaci-
ated figure in shawls emd blankets eagerly proffered
her by those who needed them less. He lay now
half asleep from exhaustion, the image of death;
and, after a time, Mrs. Grey slept, too, as persons of
a certain temperament do after a great mental strain.
Miss Lemoine sat 6md alternately watched them and
the burning steamer, which they were leaving be-
hind them. At last the young man aroused and
looked anxiously about him, emd his eyes met the
sad ones fixed upon him.

" I am the only son of my mother, and she is a
widow," he whispered. " Is it presuming too much
if I say that when I am gone, a hopeful, happy young
girl like yourself might sometimes cheer a lonely
hour ? "

" Hopeful ! Happy ! "

Did these delicious words describe her ? Propheti-
cally she felt that they did. Even amid the horrors
of those awful hours, and in the presence of death
— ^for death was coming on apace — she knew that

HOMBWABD BOUND. I IQ

something had come to her that was to make her
happy for ever !

She was not a common girl, and so she did what
few girls wonld have done. She knelt down and
took his cold hand in both hers.

** I have neither father nor mother," she said. " I
am my own mistress. If your mother emd I can
learn to love each other, and I think we can, I will
be a daughter to her after you are gone. And, per-
haps, before you go, you ought to know that you
have opened golden gates for me, and given me a
glimpse of heaven. I am going to live for that
world now ; not for this."

He did not reply, even by a smile; he only
looked up straight into her eyes till he met and re-
cognised the soul there.

Not did she shrink from the scrutiny, for death
was yet coming on apace, and precious, weighty
moments were speeding away.

"I am satisfied; you have a soul; my mother
wiU not be left alone/' he said at last.

Mrs. Grey awoke, and started up eagerly to look
at her son. Her troubled face turned to the sky,
but it was cold and leaden and sunless. He shi-
vered beneath his wrappings, and she shivered in
sympathy.

" Can't you give me to God, mother ? " he said
faintly. " He is going to give you Himself, in my

120 HOMEWARD BOUND.

place, and something strong and sweet and human
besides."

"Will you have me for a daughter, mother V
asked Edith, using the sacred word for the first time.

They clasped hands in silence, and when they
next looked at the sky, if the sun did not shine
there, it was bright where the tired traveller disap-
peared from their sight, and went into the celestial
city, to go no more out.

The " Aurora " was burned to the water's edge,
but most of her passengers were rescued by another
boat.

The hazardous and romantic compact entered into
by Edith Lemoine, would probably have come to an
unhappy ending under ordinary circumstances. But
the event proved that a divine, unerring hand had
ordained the meeting, and that the orphan girl was
to find a mother, the bereaved mother a devoted
child in an open boat upon an open sea. A friend-
ship that, was to be lifelong, had its birth on the
most fickle element, and it was a blessed thing for
both, that, though they had to cross the Atlantic
Ocean in order to meet, two kindred, congenial souls
at last recognised each other. Life is aU Providence,
not accident

TAKING FOR GRANTED,

( "3 )

TAKING FOR GRANTED.

** It was so ungentlemanly ! "
" And so xmkind ! '*
" And she bore it so sweetly ! "
These, and a score of similar remarks, proceeded
ftom a party of young girls returning home from an
afternoon sewing-circle, and the object of their dis-
pleasure was the Eev. Jeremiah Watkins, who had
'been making an address to them on the subject of
Foreign Missions. At every tea-table they repre-
sented he was made the subject of animadversion,
and in most cases the result was —
" You don't say so ! '*
*' I couldn't have believed it ! "
** It is inexcusable ! " and the like.
But there was one exception to the rule.
" Only to think, mother," cried Isabella May, the
instant the family had gathered around the tea-table,
" Miss Eaymond told Mr. Watkins at the sewing-
circle that we had agreed at her request, to call it
the * Watkins Society,' in his honour, and he replied,
' So I heard, but supposed you said it in your coarse

124 TAKING FOR GRANTED.

way ! ' Did you ever hear of such an outrageous
speech ? "

" Mr. Watkins is incapable of such rudeness," was
the reply.

'* Why, mother, half a dozen of us heard it."

** You misunderstood him. I am as positive that
he never said it as that I did not say it myself."

" But I am positive that he did. We all heard
it, and talked of nothing else all the way home."

" My dear, you are doing him a great injustice-
How often I have warned you against trusting to
first impressions. I am sure that when Mr. Watkins
hears this absurd story he will be able to explain it.
Come, let us have no more of this. I am ashamed
of you for repeating such nonsense."

Isabella would gladly have defended herself by
many vehement protestations, but she dared not run
the risk of displeasing her parents, warmly attached
as they were to the young missionary, who was about
to leave home and friends for a foreign field.

That very evening he called, and as he had been
accused in the presence of the whole family, Mrs.
May resolved to give him as public an opportunity
to defend himseK. In as few words as possible she
told him the story, adding —

" And now for your explanation to these foolish
girls, for I hrww you can make one."

" I happen to remember my reply. I felt a little

TAKING FOR GRANTED. 12$

embarrassed at the honour done me by the young
ladies, and said, ' So I heard, Miss Ea3rmond, but
supposed you only said it in your jocose way.' "

Poor Isabella May ! The blood rose to her fore-
liead, and she hurried &om the room, the picture of
shama

" I hope this lesson wiQ last for ever ! " thought
she. ** What fools we have made of ourselves. I
will never be positive about anything again as long
asIUver'

The resolution lasted till the next day, when she
thought it her duty to go through a certain portion
of the church, soliciting aid for a very destitute
family.

"Everybody gave me something but Mrs.
Howard," said she ; " and she wouldn't give me a
cent, stingy old thing ! "

** Have you any other proof that she is 'stingy?'"
inquired her mother.

" What other proof do I wemt ? There she sits
in her nicely-fumished parlour, beautifully dressed,
and wouldn't give me a red cent. How can people
be so mean ? "

Mrs. May rose without replying to this speech,
and unlocking her desk, took from it several account
books.

" * The stingy old thing ' subscribed liberally to
our Ladies' Tract Society, at all events," she said.

126 TAKING FOB GRANTED.

handing the book to Isabella. '' And I am treasurer
of our Home Mission Society also ; see, she gave
more last year than any half dozen put together."

" But that is no reason why she should refuse to
give a few cents to a poor, starving family/' said
Isabella.

" You are not stating things fairly. * A few cents ^
would have been received by you with indignation.
And what right have we to dictate to her how she
shall spend her money, or when ? "

'' I have no doubt," returned Isabella^ determined
not to be convinced, "that she is one of the sort
who subscribe largely when it will make a show,
and she can get you, and Mrs. Wentworth, and Mrs.
Bansom, and Mrs. Terry to admire her for it ; and
when a young girl, whose opinion she does not-
value, calls upon her, she draws her purse-strings to-
gether and tells her to go about her business. I am
, so disappointed ! I told poor Mrs. Murphy that I
had no doubt I could raise a hundred dollars for her
and I've only got fifty. I thought Mrs. Howard
would give fifty, at least."

" My dear, do you know of any one whom you
would like to have decree just what portion of your
money you shall spend in charity, and how ? "

" That is very different."

"Come, now, we are just filling a box for the
femily of a Western missionary, most worthy, yet

TAKING FOR GRANTED. 12/

iestitute people; I should like that grey suit of
jTouis for one of the girls; she is exactly your
lize/'

" My pretty grey suit ? Why, mother ! And I
have just given Mrs. Murphy's oldest girl my brown
suitr

"How can you sit in this * nicely-furnished
parlour, beautifully dressed/ and refuse me one suit
3f your half dozen ? "

*' I think that you are unreasonable, mother. I
am sure I am conscientious about giving. I lay
aside one-tenth of my allowance for charitable pur-
poses, and that's all the Bible requires."

" And suppose Mrs. Howard does the same ?
Have we emy right to require more of her than of
ourselves ? "

" Perhaps not But still, I do think she might
have given me something."

" Then I have an equal right to say I do think
you might give me that grey suit"

Isabella smiled, but looked a little foolish. A
few hours later she burst into her mother's room
with a —

" Well, I am about the biggest fool I ever saw !
I went to carry the fifty dollars to Mrs. Murphy,
and made a long string of accusations against Mrs
Howard"

" I hope you did not mention her name ? "

128 TAKING FOR GRANTED.

** Well, I did not intend to do that, but in the
midst of my tirade, Mrs. Murphy interrupted me to
ask of whom I was speaking, and when I told her
she began to cry.

** ' Miss Isabella ! ' she said, ' don't breathe a
word against that blessed lady ! It's me and mine
she has saved from starvation this many a year.
It's all along of the drink that she refuses to give
us money. If my poor partner would only leave
off his bad ways we should live in peace and plenty.
But when he was her coachman he was that under
the power of the liquor that he upset her carriage,
and the horses ran a long way and got hurted so they
had to be killed ; and don't you mind, miss, how
her beautiful boy was thrown out and made into
a poor cripple ? '

''I said it must have happened when I was a
little girl, for I had never heard of it. But oh,
mother, how ashamed I feel ! What shall I do to
cure myself of this habit of forming hasty and un-
charitable opinions ? Not a day passes that I do
not get into hot water in consequence. Why, ac-
cording to Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Howard has been
like an angel of mercy to her. She will not give
them money because * my poor partner ' gets it and
drinks it up ; but she pays their rent, and clothes
them, and never gets out of patience with them. I
declare I never heard of such a lovely character.

TAKING FOB GRANTED. 1 29

The next time you call there I wish you'd take me.
I mean to try to become exactly like her."

"Poor child, always in extremes," replied Mrs.
May. *' There is only one Being whom it is worth
your while to be 'exactly like.' But you cannot
imitate Him too closely."

" No, I cannot," thought Isabella, as she retired
to her own room. "If I were more like Him I
should not be so hasty and so uncharitable. But I
have had a good lesson to-day, and one I shall not
forget very soon."

She was a warm-hearted, generous girl, and when
she found herself guilty of injustice to those about
her, she felt deeply pained and grieved. And as
she desired to surmount her natural faults and
foibles, she sincerely prayed for Divine aid, while
yet proposing, if one may use such an expression
without irreverence, to form a sort of partnership
between herself and God. She was to do a great
deal by prayers and tears and efforts, and He was
to do the rest She had yet to learn the humiliat-
ing, but salutary truth that her strength was per-
fect weakness, and that the soul that would be puri-
fied and sanctified must cast itself wholly upon
Christ. So she went on, hating her easily besett-
ing sins, but contiQually following them, thereby
causing pain and trouble to herself and some of
her dearest friends.

130 TAKING FOR GRANTED.

Among the latter, she prized most highly a former
school-mate, Clara Bradshaw, and her brother Ered.
Clara was quite her opposite in character ; she could
reason before she judged, could reflect before she
spoke ; she had a large fond of good common-sense,
and often kept Isabella from her headlong mistakes.
As to Fred, he was a genial, well-informed young
man, whom Isabella admired and could have become
fond of if he had given her a chance, but whether
poverty or want of affection restrained him, he had
never paid her emy other attention than would be
natural to pay his sister's friend. Still, uncon-
sciously to herself, Isabella had solne secret, imde-
fined hopes that if he ever reached a position that
would enable him to marry, she should be his choice.
Meanwhile, as he evidently preferred no one to her-
self, she felt at ease; she had a pleasant home,
which she was in no hurry to leave, and many
spheres of happiness and usefulness lay open to her.
He and Clara were orphans, and had a family of
young brothers and sisters dependent upon them,
and this required incessant industry in both. But
the scene suddenly changed. The death of an
uncle put it into their power to alter their whole
style of living. Fred need no longer drudge as
boy's tutor, a business he detested ; and Clara could
now enjoy a little of the elegant leisure always
familiar to Isabella.

TAKING FOB GRANTED. I3I

'' It is a great change for them/' said friends and
lookers-on. " It will be a wonder if their heads are
not turned."

Indeed there was so much benevolent interest of
this sort expressed, that Fred and Clara ought to
have shown a vast amount of gratitude to almost
everybody.

For a time Isabella rejoiced with her friends most
warmly and truly. The thought that prosperity
might change their relations to herself did not cross
her mind until the fact of change became evident.
Clara, always quiet and undemonstrative, grew
more and more so ; Fred gradually ceased visiting
her, and she rarely met him in his own home.
What could it mean ? She spent many and many
a doleful hour in trying to fathom the mystery be-
fore she spoke of it to her mother, to whom she was
in the habit of confiding everything she could reveal
to any human being. But one day, as they sat
together at work, she began on this wise —

'' A line has been running in my head for several
months —

'* * Sadder than separation, sadder than death, came
change.'

'^ Is it not true that to lose faith in friends is
sadder than to be bereft of them ? If they are sepa-
rated from you ocean-wide, they are still yours;
and if they die, you feel that God has done it and

132 TAKING FOR GRANTED.

submit to His will But when they grow cold
toward you there is nothing to hope for, nothing
to do."

" This could not occur save through the will of
God, my dear child, and I see no reason for not^
referring the minor as well as the great events o
life to Him. But do not let us lose faith in ouir-
friends too readily. Circumstances may change
while affections do not. Eemember how prone you
are to hasty judgments ! "

" There is no haste in this case," returned Isabella^
" You have no idea what I have been going througls^
ever since Clara and Fred came into possession o^
their uncle's fortune. Fred never comes near me,
and Clara has grown so cold and silent ! "

'' Are you sure that there has been no change in
yourself ? "

"There was none till I was chilled by their
behaviour. At present I feel none of the sweet
confidence I used to have in their friendship,
especially Clara's. And, mother, there can be no
harm in telling you, but it mortifies and even chafes
me to see Clara, who for a little while dressed her-
self and the children as became their new position,
fall back into all her old economies. She has actu-
ally taken Will and Tom out of school, and is teaching
them herself, as she used to do. I used to pity her
when she was obliged to do this, but now — I hate

TAKING FOR GRANTED. 1 33

to own it, but it is trae — it revolts me to see
such meanness in one I have loved so devotedly.
O mother! nobody knows how I have loved her!
And now I have lost my ideal ; for if there is any
one defect in a .character I cannot forgive, it is
meanness."

** I will own that your statement surprises me,"

said Mrs. May after a time. " But habit is second

nature, you know, and Gara was bom and brought

up in a painful, narrow school Perhaps she does

not yet realise how large her fortune is. It is very

large, your father says, and she can afford herself

every reasonable indulgence. But do not throw

away a friend you have loved so long for one fault.

Bemember that you are not faultless yourself, and

that your defects are probably as repugnant to her

as hers are to you."

Isabella said no more. She felt that she knew
more than she could make her mother see. The
wound was deeper than a human hand could reach,
and the alienation between herself and Clara became
more and more decided. They kept up appearances,
but that was alL The old, delightful past was gone,
and with it some of Isabella's youthful faith in those
she loved. And, as time passed, she could not help
pourmg her grievances into other ears ; this, that,
and the other friend learned that Clara had been
spofled by her good fortune; that her pretended

134 TAKING FOR GRANTED.

affection for Isabella had been mere love of the gifts
lavished on her in poverty ; that she was incredibly
parsimonious ; yes, and there was no doubt she had
prejudiced her brother against the warmest-hearted,
most faithful friend she had ever possessed. People-
were only too willing to believe all this, and of courses
it came back to Clara's ears greatly exaggerated.
She was a proud girl, and suffered in silence, not=5
offering a word in self-defence. Two or three years»
passed on, during which Isabella's old love wouldL
have turned into contempt and aversion, but tha^
she was a Christian girl, accustomed, with all her
foibles, to pray for those who wounded, as she would
for those who despitefully used and persecuted her.
Then it began to be whispered about that Fted Brad-
shaw was leading a dissipated, worthless life, wast-
ing his own and his sister's substance in riotous
living.

" Of course he would not care for me or expect
me to care for him, if all this is true," thought
Isabella. '' But I must know it from Clara herself
not from mere public gossip."

Finding that she could no longer conceal the
misdeeds of her erring brother, Clara confessed the
economies she had practised in order to shelter him
from public scorn, how her heart had been slowly
breaking under its disappointments and shame, and
that so far from being rich and able to live at ease,

TAKING FOR GRANTED. I3S

she was now reduced to almost their original poverty.
Isabella could not express her penitence and sorrow.

" How could you let me misjudge you so ? " she
cried. " What is a friend good for, if not to weep
with those who weep ? "

" Fred was such a dear brother ! " replied Clara.
" And I had always hoped he might make you my
sister. At first I would not betray him to you,
hoping that after the first pressure of temptation
was over, he might, like the prodigal son, come to
himseU But the consciousness that I was keeping
firom you a secret of such importance made me, no
doubt, appear constrained and unlike myself. Then
I was suffering such wearing heart-aches and sus-
pense that I could not seem bright and loving
as happy people can. And I knew that, not
understanding economies, you would assume that
they sprang from a narrow mind, a thing your gene-
rous soul loathes. People have shaken their heads
and begged me not to let mine be turned by my
good fortune, when I have been going about with a
heart like lead. And other girls have talked by the
hour about some article their dressmaker had cut
wrong, while I was writhing under real sorrow. Yes,
and not a few have run on about the petty foibles
of their servants when I was straining every nerve,
listening for Fred's step, and wondering with what
evil company he was then occupied."

136 TAKING FOR GRANTED.

" I wonder you did not lose your senses."

'' I am not one of that sort. I have need of them
alL Fred has squandered not only most of our
money, but has ruined his health and lost his
reputation. "So one would receive him into their
house."

" And all this time I have been abusing you, you
poor child ! " cried Isabella, once more bursting into
tears. " Well, I can make no promises for the future
after the failures of the past. I can only hope that
the deep-seated, Grospel humility I have so long
needed, will spring up out of all we both have suf-
fered, and that, through God's blessing, this is the
last time I shall take anything for granted that
touches a human character unfavourably. If you
can f6el any respect or affection for me, I shall be
only too grateful for it, and I know now that I
never lost mine for you; I prayed for you every
day, and often and often said to myself — In heaven
all coldness will have passed away; we shall see
eye to eye, and know as we are known."

It is needless to add that the reconciliation be-
tween the friends was complete, and that Isabella
had, at last, learned a lesson whose impressions
nothing could efface. Alas, that it should be so,
but we are fallen, erring beings and have to be
taught, like refractory children, everything under
the rod.

WHY SATAN TREMBLES.

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( 139 )

TV/fV SA TAN TREMBLES.

It chanced, upon a time, that two evil spirits, sub-
ordinates of the Prince of Darkness, yet high in
rank and intelligence, were holding converse to-
gether concerning the interests of his kingdom.

"Notwithstanding the success of many of his
bold designs," said one, "some secret, invincible
obstacle yet bars his progress. While it may be
said, with truth, that the soul of man belongs to us,
our right to its possession is disputed. Our king
himself has hours of despondency."

" I have often thought," was the reply, " of visit-
ing the abodes of men, to learn, if possible, what
secret powers are in league against us. I would fain
know the number and the force of the enemy, and
whether they that be for us are more than they that
be against us. What think you ? Shall we volun-
teer to enter on such an expedition together ? "

" Nothing could give me more delight. Let us
hasten to the king and lay our project before him."

The prince received his faithful servants gra-

I40 WHY SATAN TREMBLES.

ciously, and after consenting to the proposed jour-
ney, gave them their instructions on this wise : —

"On reaching the abodes of men, you will at
first see much to encourage you. You will find
throughout the world an almost ceaseless activity
in my service. Day and night they work the
works of darkness in the walks of business and
pleasure ; at home and abroad, on land and on sea.
Everywhere the sound of clamour and contention
will make music in your ears. Everywhere the
sight of oppression, rapine, cruelty, and death will
inspire you with confidence. But there is scattered
up and down among them, a large class who profess
and call themselves Christians. They are sworn
enemies. They openly denounce me and mine.
They have their banner and their watchword.
They send their emissaries to the remotest ends of
the earth, and to the very islands of the sea. The
secret of their power is hidden from mine eyes. Yet,
alas ! I have only too lively suspicions as to its
source. How gladly would I become omniscient^
and so penetrate to the depths of every human
heart ! I charge you to search this matter to its
foundation. Do not be misled by appearances. As
they mingle among their fellow-men, these enemies
of ours do not always show their colours. They
eat, they drink, they marry and are given in mar-
riage, like those about them. They are to be seen

WHY SATAN TREMBLES. I4I

in all the ranks and relations of life, with no singu-
larities that necessarily distinguish them from their
fellows. You must foUow their every footstep, in-
vade their strictest privacy, in order to learn their
watchword and obtain the key to their inmost lives.
A man is never so much himself as when alone.
See him, then, alone. And when he is in the crowd,
tempt him ; and when he is in the desert, follow
and tempt him stiH He cannot harm you, but
you may ruin himu"

The spies listened and obeyed. They gained the
upper world and mingled with its inhabitants.
Sometimes they appeared in human guise, and of-
fered an alluring, dangerous friendship. Sometimes
they appeared angels of light. But it was more in
accordance with their character as fiends to remain
most of the time invisible, launching the imseen
darts, whispering the envenomed word. It was
their delight to lie in ambush behind some appa-
rently innocent pursuit or pleasure, and suddenly
rush thence upon an imsuspecting victim. But at
first the world struck them as almost wholly the
kingdom of their king. For here little children
were already criminals: there even women were
selling themselves imto sin. The whole earth
groaned and travailed together in a common anguish
that had sin and Satan for its base. Men met on
battlefields to hew each other down like blocks of

142 WHY SATAN TREMBLES.

wood. Eeckless and lawless mobs rushed through
the streets, laying waste the homes of widows and
orphans. Hatred and lust, sickness and sorrow and
death held triumphant reign all over the earth. In
green valleys and by the side of musical brooks, and
in the presence of God's great mountains, and in
quiet rural homes, they saw sights and heard sounds
that well-nigh froze even their ardent, hellish blood
And in populous cities these sights were but multi-
plied a thousand-fold, and these sounds were re-
echoed from a thousand souls. The less experienced
of the two spies broke forth into exultant cries —

" I see triumph written on every grain of sand
upon these shores, on every blade of grass, on every
stone that paves their streets. Man works for and
with us ; body, soul, and spirit."

As he spoke, a troop of children passed joyously
along. It was a little army with banners. They
gathered into a spacious church, and its dim, reli-
gious light fell upon a thousand forms and hallowed
a thousand faces, while their voices broke forth in
triumphant song.

" Our enemies begin to train their light infantry
betimes," said the elder spy dryly. "How wiU
they march and fight, think you, when they become
veterans in the service? Come away; this scene
disgusts me."

They crept away abashed, they knew not why,

WHY SATAN TREMBLES. 1 43

and flew over land and sea only to find men leagued
together in the cause of their God. Christian
mothers taught their little ones the name of Jesus.
Multitudes thronged to temples built for His wor-
ship, and did Him honour. They went forth, two
and two, to carry His praise to the ends of the
earth. They formed themselves into bands and
fought their way through the very camp of the
enemy. They poured out their money like water,
and counted not their lives dear unto them, for their
watchword was, " Faithful unto death."

"You will observe," said the elder confederate,
'* that the power of these saints is immense. Their
organisations are well-nigh perfect. They have
their Sunday schools, their churches, their innumer-
able societies, all over the globe."

" But is not tiiis equally tame of us ? And have
we not lurking in every human soul, a traitor ready
at almost any moment to arise and bid us welcome ?
I am disturbed by what I see, but not disheartened.
These men are not aU of one mind. They waste
time and strength in useless discussion. They
hinder their success by their pride and by their con-
ceit. There is not one among them who has not
within him the germ of dose likeness to our prince.
Like him, they may fall off from their allegiance and
become finally his."

" They may, but it will require all his and all our

144 ^^^^^^ SATAN TREMBLES.

craft and vigilance to accomplish that end. For
know that I have a clue to the obstacle hinted at
by our prince. It transcends in its gravity and im-
portance all we have hitherto seen. Eemember that
we have yet to penetrate where mortal footsteps
may not venture. We are on the threshold of such
a scene ; let us give it a moment."

They enter a room, and saw a little child kneeling
and praying —

'^ Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me !
Bless Thy little lamb to-night"

Shrouded by the shades of evening, but visible to
the eyes of the spirits of evil, there stood the Man,
Christ Jesus. His hand was on the head of the
child. He was hearing and answering the infantine
petition.

The younger spy shrugged his shoulders and
smiled ; but no answering smile responded to his.

" Is the prattle of babes to dethrone our king ? "
he asked derisively.

" Nay, but come hither," was the reply.

They stole to another room. A young girl knelt
with clasped hands ; her face, beaming with celestial
peace, was raised to heaven, and her lips moved in
prayer. Her experiences of life had been brief and
well-nigh painless. She had grown up in a happy
home, shielded from temptation and guarded from
harm. The depths of her soul had not yet been

"WHY SATAN TREMBLES. I45

stirred by sorrow or by passion. Yet, as some flowers
tain to the sun, so this soul turned and opened itself
to the Sun of Bighteousness ; morning and night
found her looking upward in adoration and in
prayer. Unconsciously, she was becoming rooted
and grounded in love by each act of devotion, and
gaining strength for future conflict and dismay. The
words she uttered were few and simple, but Jesus
Himself waited to listen to and accept themu

" I should not be appalled by such a sight as
this," said the elder spy ; " but the scenes I am now
calling you to witness are habitual, not occasional.
That little child makes an altar of its mother's knee
every morning and every evening. This young girl
has sprung from such a childhood. Her habits are
as fixed as the everlasting hills. And the habits
of the Being she adores are equally as inflexible.
She, an obscure, timid girl, has power to summon
her King from His throne, and He listens with as
much sympathy to her story as to that of any
potentate on eartL"

" We can afford it ! " was the reply.

**Here there is a man who has spent all his best
years in our service. He has despised and con-
tenmed God, angels, and men. Lucifer, Son of the
Morning, was not more richly endowed with self-
reliance and with pride. He is one of the strong
men of his times. Behold him now."

146 WHY SATAN TREMBLEa

They looked and beheld a grey-haired, venerable
man lying in the very dust, not so much as lifting
his eyes unto heaven, but smiting on his breast and
crying, " God be merciful to me, a sinner ! " He
recounts the sins of his youth and of his manhood.
He declares that he abhors himself, and repents in
dust and ashes. He entreats forgiveness, with rivers
of water flowing from his eyes. Every word he
speaks comes heaving up from the very depths of
his soul. He does not know that he is humble and
like a little child ; he only knows that he is a sinner
against God. And, alas, for the emissaries of Satan I
He who inspired, also hears this prayer. Their eyes
behold Him in His beauty ; they despise, and esteem
Him not ; but still they see Him visibly present,
with tender eyes and loving glance. How gladly
they escape from this uncongenial scene, and fly
for refreshment to kindred souls !

"That man has prayed thus for years. Every
day his confessions become more ample and more
minute. Morning, noon, and night he withdraws
from business and pleasure, and comes to this spot,
and prostrates himself before God. And he never
has come to an empty room. His Master is alwajrs
there waiting for, expecting him. For such a man
to go from such a Presence into the pursuit of our
interests, is simply impossible."

WHY SATAN TREMBLSa 1 47

So spake the evil spirit, and trembled as he
spake.

The two passed next an open door, whence a
coflBn was bom tenderly out.

" That was the only son of his mother, and she
was a widow," said the elder to the younger. " Let
us hasten to her, that in her sorrow she may not
maintain her allegiance."

They approached the couch on which she had
thrown herself, and even these malignant beings
respected, and were for a moment silent before her
sorrow.

Then he who was most hardened in sin whispered
— " It was your one little ewe lamb, that slept in
your bosom ! It was aU you had left. Earth has
no longer a single joy for you. And how many
other mothers are at this moment sitting as queens
in homes never made desolate by deatL Why
should you be smitten while they are spared?
Bevolt against Him who has dealt so unjustly
with you ; curse Him and die ! "

In her despair she did not recognise the voice of
the Tempter; she fancied these rebellious thoughts
originated in her own breast. " Is it possible that
I am upbraiding my Lord and Master ? " she cried.
" Let me fly to Him for refuge from myself."

She fell down on her knees and lifted up her
face all wet with tears. Not a word fell from her

148 WHY SATAN TREMBLES.

lips. Her prayer was a simple' looking upward, a
groan, a speechless cry. And yet the Master re-
sponded to the look, and came and sorrowed with
her.

"Do not grieve, my child," He said," that you
cannot take words and come with them to me in
this time of sorrow. I have seen thy tears, and I
accept them as the only sacrifice thy broken heart
can oflfer. Weep on, here at my feet."

She lay and wept till, for a time, her grief was
spent, and when she looked up she saw the com-
passionate face of Him who had smitten her.

"Ah, how many times I have asked for faith
with which to say, * Thy will be done 1' Lord, I can
say it now —

** * My Jesus, as Thou wilt, oh, let Thy will be mine ;
Into Thy hand of love I would my all resign ! * "

" Come up hence," said the evil spirits to each
other. "We can gain nothing here. This atmo-
sphere is stifling. A curse on prayers, and a curse
on those who offer them ! "

They darted away, and in the darkness of mid-
night alighted on a battle-field, where, in the gloom
and obscurity, lay hundreds of suffering, maimed,
and dying men. A solitary chaplain, with a feeble
squad of assistants, was passing from point to point,
seeking in the spirit of heaven itself to save some-
what out of this wreck and ruin of humanity. But

" Ha eriod In hi» dwp«ir—

" ' Hare, Lord, I e^n mjaaii »wbj
-at liUtlaX I Ota do I-

WHY SATAN TREMBLES. I5I

few out of that number could his small force bear
away, As he carefully picked his way among the
dead and dying, a boy cast upon him an imploring
glance. But it was seen only by the spirits of evil,
who hovered near, awaiting their prey. The salva-
tion of a human soul trembled in the balance. The
boy remembered his wild and reckless youth ; his
mother's prayers ; his father's blessings. He knew,
as he watched the chaplain's retreating figure, that
all hope for this life was over. One refuge alone
availed him. He clasped his hands and cried in his
despair —

" Here, Lord, I give myself away ;
'Tis aU that I can do ! "

And as the words died on his lips, the two evil
spirits stepped aside and gave place to the angels
who came to bear the new-bom soul into the pre-
sence of its Redeemer.

" He entered heaven by prayer."

It was Sunday, and a popular preacher addressed
a brilliant assemblage. Outwardly all was devout
and serious. Men who through the week had served
themselves with diligence, had now come together
to serve the Lord. They knelt and called them-
selves miserable sinners. They joined in songs of
praise with decency and order. They listened with
decorum to the voice of their favourite, and magni-
fied him in their hearts. But when the service was

152 WHY SATAN TREMBLES.

over, they rose and passed out into the world.
They spoke together of the times, and of business
and pleasure. Women studied, as they had done
through the hour so outwardly solemn, each other's
toilets, and devised their own.

The younger spy congratulated his comrade on
the success of the day.

" You look only on the surface," was the reply.
"We have friends here, it is true; but we have
foes, likewise. Half these people will go home and
shut themselves up in that villainous spot cant calls
their 'closet,' and pray for the other half. And
now let us follow the preacher to his."

" I kept at him through the whole service," said
the other, "reminding him of his popularity and
plying him with conceited suggestions. We are
sure of him in the end."

They followed him to his study, and saw the
flush of satisfaction fade from his cheek, the light
die out from his eye. He paced his room with
clasped hands and uncertain steps. Suddenly he
fell upon his knees and raised his eyes to heaven.
The spies drew near and listened.

" my God, search me and try me, and see if there
be any wicked way in me ! If I have preached
myself and not my Master, Lord, forgive me ! If
I have veiled the truth under too plausible words,
my Father, forgive me ! K one hungry soul has

WHY SATAN TREMBLES. 1 53

gone forth from Thy sanctuary unfed, lay not the
sin to my chaige! Have pity on my ignorance
and weakness, and teach me how to win souls for
Thee! Accept my poor attempt to honour Thee
in the name and for the sake of Christ Jesus, Thy
Son!"

** BafSed again I ** cried the spies, exchanging
glances. " Let us away ! "

They went from clime to clime, from mountain
to valley, from the palace to the hovel, from old to
young. Wherever they went temptation went too.
But everywhere they found themselves met and
resisted by the sacred habit of struggling souls, that,
conscious of their own weakness and of Divine
strength, cast and ventured themselves on God.

"We have learned the fatal secret," was their
report on their return to their own infernal abode.
''As long as men and women and little children
believe in praying and do pray, they are beyond
our reach. After visiting thousands and thousands
of homes, and penetrated to their most sacred ob-
servances, we return disheartened and afraid. For
of thousands and tens of thousands our sad report

" Behold, he prayeth ! "

HAVING NOTHING, YET
HAVING ALL.

( 157 )

HAVING NOTHING. YET
HAVING ALL.

A BOY sat by the side of a clear stream, listening to
its melodious voice in thonghtful silence, while his
companions sported on its bank not far away.

** How the fishes dart about ! " he said to himself,
" and how cool and clear the waters are ! I wish
I were a fish. It is so hot and dusty here in the
Sim, and it must be so nice down there ! "

The more he watched the waters the more musi-
cally their notes fell upon his ear.

'' People say that men and women and children
cannot live in the water," he went on. " But why
can't they ? I don't see why. At any rate, I am
going to try it for myself."

The stream was not very deep, but the boy was
very little, and instead of darting gleefully about,
as he had expected to do, he soon began to pant for
breath as the fatal waters closed around him. The
other children, happening to see the plight he was
in, came and pulled him out, and after a time

I $8 HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL.

he was sufiSciently recovered to be able to describe
the experiment he had been trying. They all
laughed at him and ran back to their play. But
he sat, thoughtfully, on the bank, pondering the
question, " If fishes can live in the water, why can-
not I ? " At last, an old man came along and said
to the child —

" A penny for your thoughts, little boy."

" I was wondering why I could not live in the
water, like fishes," was the reply.

" You were not Tnade to live in the water," said
the old man, and went his way.

Meanwhile the fishes were shyly watching the
group of children at their play, noting the bright
faces and the merry laughter, and one of them, in
his eagerness to see and hear and join in the sport,
fairly leaped out of his native element into the
throng. But it was to pain, not to pleasure. He
lay panting for breath, turning this way and that
for relief, suffering almost unto death.

" See that poor little fish ! " cried the children.
" He has leaped out of the water and is dying. Let
us throw him back again."

The fish soon recovered himself, but was thence-
forth sadder and w'iser.

" Everything up there looked so pleasant," he said'
to himself. "Why was I so miserable where
others were so happy ? "

HAVINa HOTHDJa, TBT HAVING ALL.

159

A sage among bis compaoions replied, in passing
— " Ton were not made to live on land "

Now there waa a young man m those da3rs who,
looking npon a certain element in which others dis-
ported themselves, naturally imagined that they
were as happy as they were merry, and that he
conld find feboity as they fancied they found it.

And this was not the expectation of a foolish and
thoughtless mind. There was not a wiser man in
his generation. Nor was it the hope of a merely
worldly man. He was a man who, to a certain
degree loved and feared God, and was in the habit
of praying to Him.

Nor was it the result of a narrow, superficial

l60 HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL.

character, for he possessed a great, . wide hearfc,
capable of unbounded happiness. What he lacked
was what all young people lack — experience. He
had been told that the element of pleasure in which
most men tried to live was not their native element,
but he did not believe it. It looked attractive, and
he resolved to give it a fair trial.

And he began by getting everything he wanted.
Whatever he saw that pleased his eye he seized.
If he wanted houses he built them. If he wanted
gardens he planted them. Every sort of fruit he
could hear of grew in his vineyards and orchards.
He ate his food and drank his wine from vessels
of pure gold. His ships traversed the seas and
poured the treasures of foreign lands into his
gorgeous palaces.

If there were any treasures that were considered
royal, those treasures he made his peculiar search
till they became his own. He was fond of music
and feasted himself on it prodigally, gathering its
best artists about him, both men and women. He
loved knowledge, and acquired it to such a degree
that no question could be asked him to which
he could not give a ready answer. He loved the
natural sciences, and could instruct all men in the
habits and history of every beast of the field, every
tree in the forest, every flower that grows. He was
a poet, and his soul found vent in hundreds of songs.

HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL. l6l

He was a philosopher, and his words were so full of
wisdom that they became proverbs. He loved fame,
and even royalty came from afar to honour him.
And they who served him were called happy in the
privilege of living for such a master.

Surely, all the conditions of happiness are here :
youth, learning, wealth, love, fame — not a desire
unsatisfied, not a gift denied. And yet all so failed
of its end, that while living in this false element,
life was such a burden to him that he said of it, ' /
hate it ! "

Where was his mistake ? Are not many of the
innocent, sweet joys of life to be found where he
sought and failed to find them? Undoubtedly.
The boy who sat by the stream and fancied its
waters were cool and agreeable was right in believ-
ing them to be so, but wrong in the conclusion that
they were, therefore, the element in which he could
live. The fish thought the grassy bank a desirable
spot because he saw merry faces and heard gay
voices there, and so it was ; but the air was not
the element in which he was formed to exist.

There lies upon a hard bed in an obscure home
a poor woman, who had lain there unnoticed by the
world eight and twenty years. She had never known
what it was to indulge herself in her life. Her
childhood was a struggle, and physical existence has
long been one. Her resources are very few. The

1 62 HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL.

only landscape she has seen for years is the smoke-
stained ceiling of her own room. Her coarse food
revolts her invalid appetite. She is not gifted in
intellect ; has no culture in the sense in which that
word is used ; there is nothing attractive about her
person; she is only a plain, unlearned, suffering
woman, whom people would patronise if they knew
her wants, and then go away and forget. But she is
not trying to live in pleasure, and so is not dead
while she liveth. She has learned, not through any
might or power or wisdom of her own, that God is the
element in which the human soul was formed to Kve,
and in Him she lives and moves and has her being.
Let us hear what she says about it —
" I never had any thoughts about anything. It
was just get up in the morning and go to work, and
work all day long, and then when it came night go to
bed and to sleep. It went on so till I was eighteen
years old, and then John Turner began to come to
see me, and we got to talking about being married
some time. After that the wort didn't seem so
hard ; I would get to thinking about him, and the
time would slip away, and when it came night he
always came, and we saved and planned and talked
about having a snug little home of our own. If
anybody had come along then and talked to me
about God and heaven, I shouldn't have listened
. I should*have said, ' I've got John and that's enough.'

HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL. 1 63

** But one day I had a faU. I was sitting in the
waggon, on a chair, and the chair upset and I fell
out backwards. At first they thought I wasn't
hurt much, and I kept expecting and expecting to
get weU. But instead of that I grew more helpless
every day. My mother had led a hard life before,
but now she had my work to do, and had me to
take care of. But when she began to break down
John came and lived here as if he was her own son
and help lift me when I had to be moved, and was
kind and gentle, like a woman.

** So it went on a good while, and then it began
to come to me that I should never get well, and
never be John's wife. I lay and cried about it when
nobody was by, and I said to myself, * Other girls
are well and strong, and get married to ones they
love, but Tve got to lie here, and it's hard, its
hard.^

**And then I noticed how loving John was to
Kttle children, how he was always bringing them in
on his shoxdder, and making much of them. And
one day I said to him — it came out the minute I
thought 9f it — 'John, you'll never marry me; I
shall never be well enough. And you ought
not to be tied to me. You ought to find a nice,
tidy girl, and get married to her.' He said he never
could or would, and got up and went and sat on the
doorstep, and I heard him sigh twice. And I lay

1 64 HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL.

all night wishing I hadn't spoken those words, for I
thought if they drove him away from me to some
other girl, I should die.

"So years went by, and he was as kind and
gentle as ever, but I began to miss something out
of him. It isn't worth while to make a long story
of it. He was ever so much ashamed and cried
about it ; but he wanted a lass who could make a
home for him, and I made it easy for him ; and he
went and got married to Huldy Jones. The first
time he brought her to see me I felt as if I could
strike her dead. But, after they'd gone, I asked mother
to bring me a little looking-glass. I hadn't thought
to look at myself for a long time. Well, what did I
see ? Not the wholesome young thing John used to
court, but a faded, worn-out, uncomely, oldish woman.
My forehead, that once was white and smooth, was
nothing but a set of wrinkles ; my eyes, that used
to laugh so, had grown dull and leaden ; and where
I was sound and plump, I was now long and lean.
I lay and looked at myself a whole hour, and then I
forgave John, and I forgave Huldy, and said, * I've got
mother lefty and there's nobody after all, like a mother.'

" But somehow I pined for John, and the more I
broke down the more I wore on mother. I'll make
it as short as I can; mother died. It seemed
strange that I didn't die, too, but I didn't ; I jiist
lived and suffered.

HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL, 1 65

" Somebody had got to take care of me, but no-
body wanted to do it ; I was so fractious and com-
plaining. But at last an old woman came, for the
sake of earning her Uving, poor thing. And John
sometimes brought Huldy to see me. She had no
reason to be jealous of what little there was left of
me, and she wasn't But when I saw those two
young things together, I realised that John was not
my John any longer, and I missed his love and
missed mother's. And I said to myself, * What is
th6 reason we have hearts if the things we love
change and die ? Is it to torment us ? ' I used to
lay awake nights, thinking and moaning ; only I
had to moan softly, lest they should hear. And I
began to remember that my grandmother, who was
a godly woman, used to say, and keep saying, that
any one who had God for a Friend had got all he
needed. Then I began to feel 'round after Him,
but in the dark : for this is a lonesome neighbour-
hood, and it's seldom that I see any one except the
family. Of course, I had a Bible, but hadn't read
it much. I never took to books. But now I began
to read it all the time. I wanted to find out what
I must do to get GU)d to like me and be my Friend.

"T don't suppose anybody in the world was so
lonesome as I was ; for, though to look at me lying
here like one dead, it would seem as if I had got
too old and too sick to want somebody to love me.

1 66 HAvma nothing, yet having all.

I never had cared so much — not even when I wa^
a girL And I thought if I left off fretting and cty-
ing, and grew patient and quiet an^d good, that
>pei:haps God would be sorry for me, and perhaps
come in time to give me a kind thought now and
then. But I couldn't make myself good. The
more I tried the worse I grew. And, though I left
off fretting with words, the fret was, in me just the
same, and as I got no comfort out of God^ I began
to get angry with Him. I said to myself, * If it
hadn't been for that fall I should be John's wife.
It's too bad.'

"You see, I was kicking against the pricks. One
day John brought his two boys to see me. One of
them was four years old, and the other just b^in-
ning to walk and to get into mischief. He was shy
at first and clung to his father's neck ; but after a
time he got down and ran about the room, meddling,
as children will, with everything. John took away
things he ought not to have several times. At last
the child got a knife off the table, and when his
father tried to make him give it up, screamed and
ran away with it. John caught him, took away the
knife, and struck his hands twice. It hurt me to
see the child's lip quiver, and I said, ' A moment
ago you couldn't fondle Johnny enough, and now
you strike him.'

" ' Yes, I strike him just as I fondle him because

HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL. 1 6/

I love him. Isn't it my duty to make an obedient
bov of him V

"The words went right through me. Was it
because God loved me that He let me get the fall ?
Should I ever have thought of Him if I had kept
strong and well ? And then I opened my Bible
and came to the text, ' We love Him because He
first loved us;* and it seemed as if God's Holy
Spirit took pity on my ignorance and set me to
reading all the verses that taught that He loved
us, not because He saw anything good in us, but
because loving is just His way. The very heart in
me leaped up for joy, and I began to love Him
that minute. I saw as plain as day, that though-
I'd grown so sickly and cross-grained and tiresome
that nobody in the world could bear me. He was
sorry that I was sick, and sorry that I had grown
to be fretful and peevish and disagreeable. It as-
tonished me so, and I was so taken up with it, that
I never knew when John went away. To think
that God could love me ! I couldn't make it
out. The next time John came, he stood by the
side of the bed and says to me, * How are you to-
day, Sarah ? As bad as ever ? ' — meaning my pain.
"*Yes, as bad as ever,' says I, 'but I've got
acquainted with God since you were here, and if I'm
bad, He's good ; I can't tell you how good.'

" John looked at the old woman, then, who takes

l68 HAVING NOTHINa, YET HAVING ALL.

care of me, and put his finger up to his forehead, as
much as to say * There's something wrong with her
mind/

" * Let her be/ says she ; ' I Ve heard people talk
this way before/

" * You think I'm having a hard time, John,' says
I, ' but I'm having the best time in the world. I've
got everything I want.'

" * Don't you want to be well ? ' says he

" * No, I want everything just as it is.'

*' John is a great, strong man, as tall and straight
as a poplar tree, and I never saw him cry but once
before ; but now the tears began to run down his
cheeks.

** Well, it went on so that I never had a lonesome
moment. When I wasn't reading my Bible, or
speaking to God, He was speaking to me, saying
such kind and comforting and loving things ! 1
don't think He could seem so tender to people who
are well and strong.

" I used to lie awake thinking how poor I was,
and what a hard bed this was to lie on so many
years, and to wish I could have a little change in
my food, or some one come in to talk to me and
cheer me a bit. But now I can't think of anything
I want. If I could have all the money in the
world, and everything money could buy, and ever
so many friends, and be young and well and strong
again, but have to give up what I've learned in this

HAVING NOTHING, YET HAVING ALL. 1 69

sick-room, I wouldn't give up an atom of it We
read in the Bible about Jesus going around among
poor people and sick people and dying people, and
how sorry He was for them, and what He said to
them, and what He did for them. Well, He hasn't
changed a bit since then. He comes here into this
poor little room and sits down here by the bed, and
makes me so happy that I'm ashamed. And I'm
going to thank Him as long as I live that He never
gave me many of the things people caU good, and
even took away what He did give, because now I've
got nothing but Him, and He is enough."

*' Isn't this all a delusion ? "

" Well, suppose it is ; what harm has it done me ?
It has made a palace out of this hovel, and a happy
woman out of a miserable one. But it isn't a de-
lusion. Itls all in the Bible, every word of it, and
more too. You just take it and sit down and read
the promises, and then push everything out of the
way that you love better than you love God, and
take Him at His word, and you'll see what He is,
and that I haven't said half enough about Him, not
half enough. Oh, how I thank Him that He took
away the use of my young limbs and laid me on
this bed of pain; that He took away John; that
He took away mother — all I had !

"And now I know what the Bible means when
it says, ' As having nothing, and yet possessing aU
things!

» n

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT

V

( 173 )

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

young men, Eobert Neale and William Collier,
ered college together, and during the four suc-
ding years a warm friendship sprang up between
im. Fellow-students wondered what points of
igeniality there were between them, and would
re sneered at their Quixotic imion, but for the
t that everything Neale said and did appeared
lit in all eyes. He was a brilliant, attractive,
3ular young fellow. Nature had done for him
she could. She seemed to have been amusing
•self by giving him so many varied talents, so
lial a humour, so noble and manly a person,
len William Collier, rather small for his age,
nd that the college favourite accepted his hom-
) graciously, he could hardly believe his senses,
i he often asked himself what he had done that
itled him to favours others sought in vain,
ale often asked himself what bound him to
Uier, who possessed none of the originality and
shness that make an agreeable companion. The
t was, that the latter understood him better than

174 SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

any other classmate did, and that on the principle
that " it is the inferior natures that appreciate, in-
dulge, reverence, and even comprehend genius the
most/' Perhaps^ the philosophy of this principle
may be found in the fact, that the ** inferior nature **
finding little to admire in itself^ naturally seeks
something to admire out of and above itsel£ But
be that as it may, the two were almost constantly
together — the one adoring, the other adored.

Neale had leisure to make himself agreeable to
many another besides his chum. It cost him little
time to prepare himself for his recitations, and,
while Collier plodded painfully at his task, he was
here, there, and everywhere, the life of every fes-
tivity. It came to be understood that he was to
receive all the encomiums and bear off all the hon-
ours, and he had such a joyous way of accepting
the situation, was so free from any superior airs,
that his success was rather enjoyed than envied.

As the years passed, his friends at home were
kept in a state of constant elation by the accounts
they received of him, and during his vacations he
was treated as a hero and caressed and looked up
to in a way that might easily have turned any
head.

Meanwhile, Collier was not making his mark in
any way. He was doing the best he could, and his
family loved him and made much of him, and, as

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT. 1 7$

he shone in the reflected light of Bobert Neale,
fancied him a good deal of a man. But they felt
it to be a great misfortune when, during his last
year in college, he fell in love with a very young
girl and became engaged to her. '' What business
had a mere boy like our Will to do such an impru-
dent thing?" they cried. "He can't be married
for years and years. Besides, his tastes may en-
tirely change ; what satisfies him now may not
please him in the least in the future." All this
was true, but it did not alter the fact that " our
Will," having hitherto been called a man, did not
consider himseU a boy, and was not disposed to
make concessions which might seem due to that
titla So that, when the two young men graduated,
one went off with flying colours to a more than
satisfied circle of friends, the other with no honours
and to a disappointed family.

Neale's delighted father now sent him abroad/
where he spent as much money as he pleased,
fascinated everybody he met, and found life charm-
ing in every aspect. Collier entered a Theological
Seminary, feeling himself a little under a cloud.
His family were not entirely pleased with him,
and he foimd his love-affair a clog to his student-
life. At the same time, he was too far in for it to
recede. His beloved admired him, if nobody else
did ; she had never complained that he did not

176 SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

shine in college ; one of these days, when he should
stand in his pulpit, he should see that sweet face
turned reverently upward toward his. He wished
he had a higher motive for diligence in his studies
than to please this little unfledged bird ; but he
said to himself that she was a rare bird, and so. she
was, and that one day his family would admire his
choice.

But that day was never to come. He was sud-
denly stunned by the news that this rare bird had
spread her wings and flown upward out of his reach.
When his family saw how grief immanned him they
wished they could recall her, and did for him every-
thing affectionate, sympathising friends could do.
But a sorrow Eobert Neale could soon have thrown
off his joyous nature, clung to this opposite one with
leaden hands. He could not study, could not in-
terest himself in anything. An inward voice whis-
pered, at least to say, " God's will be done.'* But he
could not say it ; and, alarmed for his health, his
friends sent him abroad. It was an important point
in his history ; perhaps, if he had stayed at home,
his sorrow would have wrought for him an exceed-
ing joy. It certainly had a somewhat elevating
effect. But foreign travel is not favourable to re-
flection or to prayer. He joined his old friend
Neale, admired his sallies of wit, and was cheered
by his overflowing spirits. For a pure man Neale

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT. 1 7/

was intensely human. His health was perfect and
he loved to live for the sake of living. He intended
to go to heaven when he died, of course, but wanted
to have a good time on earth first, and when Collier,
who could not help speculating about the place to
which his Mary had gone, spoke of the next life, he
would become quite serious for the moment and add
his own speculations, which were quaint enough.

Measuring Collier's piety by his own, he fancied
l?ini quite a saint, and respected him as such.

"K such trouble as yours had come upon me,"
he said, " I should see some sense in it. No doubt,
a whipping would do me good. But why an ex-
emplary fellow like you should have such a dis-
appointment, I can't see." Yet in a thoughtless
moment, speaking of Collier to a mutual friend, he
said, " I love the boy, and it hurts me to see him
suffer so. But what a pity he hasn't sense enough
to curse God and die. I should, in his placa"

Two years later the friends returned home.
Neale began to study law ; Collier returned to the
seminary. Time had tempered, but not healed, his
sorrow. He had come back a disciplined man
expecting far less from life than he had done, and
disposed to take what came quietly. Neale still
fascinated him ; they met often, and the friendship
absorbed his leisure; so that he formed no in-
timate one among his fellow-students until the

M

178 SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

last year of his course. Then a very different man
crossed his patL His name was Bruce. He one
day read a sermon before his class for their criti-
cism. It was on the subject of chastisement. Collier
had suffered enough to know that even the young
can speak on this subject experimentally, but he
had not made the wise use of his discipline that
this sermon enjoined. He sought Bruce at the
earliest opportunity, and in a long conversation
with him began to understand, for the first time,
that the brilliant man is not necessarily the most
useful, nor the prosperous the happiest. Bruce had
been in a hard school — the school of poverty, of dis-
appointment, of bereavement ; there he had learned
to get down on his knees and to pray, and to suffer
in faith and patience. From that moment a new
life began to open itself to Collier's darkened under-
standing. He saw that to get all one wants out of
life is not necessarily success ; that to be thwarted,
disappointed, bereaved, is not necessarily defeat
Taking this thought for his text, he began to under-
stand what had befallen him and to face the future
with fresh courage. And he needed this courage,
for his way was hedged up. He " candidated " here
and candidated there ; he grew less ambitious, had
less faith in himself, every day. His father was
not a rich man and had made great sacrifices in
educating him, and he felt that it was high time to

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT. 1 79

support himselt • But the door of success was closed
to >iiTw ; he was not popular.

Meanwhile, Bobert Neale had become established
as a lawyer, with most brilliant prospects. He was
finding time to write humorous poems that were
welcomed in private and public, was going to marry
a " splendid " girl, and was the very picture of a
prosperous, talented, satisfied man. But while Col-
lier admired his genius as much as ever, they were
imperceptibly drifting apart. The one was drinking
joyfully at earthly fountains and finding the waters
sparkling, exhilarating, and sweet. The other found
these fountains sealed to him, and was drinking, in
silent ecstasy and amazement, those waters of which
if a man drink he shall never thirst.

Eobert Neale's marriage took place about this
time with great pomp and ceremony. But shortly
after that event. Collier was startled by a great
change in his hitherto genial, care-free friend. All
the brightness that had charmed him in the past
was gone, though there was an assumed gaiety that
deceived the world. Collier's sympathies were at
once aroused, and he caught his friend affectionately
by the hand, expecting his confidence —

" What is it, dear Eobert ? What is going
wrong ? " he inquired.

" Nothing is going wrong, old fellow. Take off
that long face."

l8o SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

"You can't deceive me. Something is wearing
on you."

"Let me alone. Nobody lives on roses. I've
thrown away my chance of being a saint, like you,
and all that's up."

Thus repulsed, Collier went his way, perplexed
and troubled. There was only one thing he could
do, and that was to pray, and pray he did. He had
another chance to candidate in a remote country
village, and went with fresh hopes. But his sermon,
full of plain common-sense, and for a man of his
age, wonderfully experienced, did not take. They
wanted a wide-awake, talented man, who would stir
them up and interest the young people. This new
rebuff sent him where all disappointments sent him
now, right to his God and Saviour, with the silent
cry, " Thy wiU be done, Thy will be done."

" It is strange that our WiU cannot find a set of
people who can appreciate him," said his mother.
" I know he isn't one of your noisy, clap-trap men,
but he's made a good use of his troubles, and, for
my part, I like to hear him preach."

" Being his mother, that's rather peculiar," said
one of her daughters, to whom the remark was
made.

" Well, Mrs. Peck isn't his mother, and she said
the last sermon she heard him preach was really
wonderful."

SUCCESS AND D£F£AT. l8l

*' It sounded wonderful to her because she has
known Will ever since he was a baby ; and besides,
her judgment isn't worth a straw. The truth is,
Will is a dear, good boy, but he never will reach
or stir the popular heart. I almost wish he had
studied some other profession."

" Would you rather have him like Robert Neale V

" I would not have him like Eobert Neale, but
being just what he is, I should be glad if he had
some of his genius besides. I feel so sorry for him
when he comes dragging himself home from his
unsuccessful expeditions, looking so patient, yet so
disappointed. Why should Eobert Neale and such
as he have all the good times, and Will all the bad
ones ? Why should other men get into lucrative,
honourable positions, settle down in life, have all
they want, and our Will stand out in the cold ? "

*' ' Even so, Father : for it so seems good in Thy
sight,' " was the reply.

" Well, I will own I should like a brother to be
proud o£"

" You Jiave a brother to be proud of. When you
are so old as I am, you will value goodness more
than you value intellect and worldly advantages
now. I would rather be the mother of my Will,
just as he is, than the mother of Eobert Neale.
And Will will find his place yet. The stone that
is fit for the wall is never left in the road. I am

l82 SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

thankful that I have never sought great things for
my children. All I have ever desired for any of
you is that you may be * content to fill a little space,
if God be glorified/ ''

The conversation was interrupted, and not re-
sumed for some days, when it was renewed, on this
wise, the mother and daughter sitting together at
their work —

"Have you heard the dreadful stories they are
whispering about Eobert Neale, mother ? **

"Yes I have heard them, and am sorry yon
have/'

" Of course they are not true ? "

The mother was silent.

" They are too dreadful to be true."

" Let us hope so."

" Mother," said WiU, entering the room, " can I
see you alone a moment ? "

" Always some secret between you and mother,"
said the sister gaily. " I suppose that is a gentle
hint for me to retreat. Well, Fm off! '*

"I need not ask you what you have come to
tell, Will," said his mother when they were alone.
" That gifted young man has fallen. I had heard
it whispered, but could not believe it."

"Yes, his name is stained; he is a fallen star.
I could not have believed it. Everything looked
so full of promise for him, he was so bright, had

SUCCESS AND DEFEAT. 1 83

always been so pure ! How proud we all were of
him ! mother ! how thankful it makes me feel
that Gk)d has kept me down ! If I had had Bobert's
genius, I should have gone to ruin just as he has.
He was too richly endowed ; too strong in his own
strength ! Robert ! Eobert 1 "

'' Do not let us think of him as ruined. Let us
pray for him day and night, that he may pass out
of this cloud a wiser and a better man. While he
was so full of earthly prosperity, he felt no need of
Gk>d ; now that he has stumbled and fallen on the
threshold of life, he will call upon Him."

" I hope so ; I do hope so. Mother, I have one
chance more to preach as a candidate. I have seen
the time when I should have felt that a man of my
education ought not to look at such a field of labour.
But my Lord and Master has humbled me, and
taught me to go anywhere He went. And He
went among the very poor, and the very ignorant.
Pray, while I am gone, that if I am the pght man,
I may be going to the right people."

He went, and the people heard him gladly. The
right man had found the right place at last. He
had a lowly home, his name was never heard of
outside of his own little parish, but it was loved
there, and he was happy in his obscurity. He was
happy, for amid his many trials and sorrows, and
hopes long deferred, he had learned Christ as few

1 84 SUCCESS AND DEFEAT.

learn Him, and preached Him as few preach : not
with enticing words of man's wisdom, but through
the teachings of the Spirit, and out of his own
experience.

As I am not writing a romantic, aimless fiction,
but painting life as it really is, I shall have to own
that he found a wife to share his new home. Of
course, sentimental people will say he ought to
have remained that one-sided, one- winged creature,
an old bachelor, and had himseK carefully labelled,
"Sacred to a memory." But he had an honest
heart, and gave it to an honest woman, who blessed
him, and whom he blessed.

And while peace nestled in his heart and settled
on his face, while in all lowliness and meekness he
was adorning the Gospel of Christ, Eobert Neale
envied him his pure conscience, and walked the
earth an unhappy, dishonoured man, feeling his great
gifts little better than mockery. The race is not to
the swift, nor the battle to the strong. The life of
the defeated was a success ; the life of the successful
a defeat.

**ON THE BANKS OF THE
RIVER OF LIFE."

( 187 )

''ON THE BANKS OF THE
RIVER OF LIFEr

An earnest teacher of a Bible class of young ladies
brought them together, one evening, in her own house.
She had for years watched over these souls, praying
for and with them individually, and her labours had
been crowned with a certain success. But she felt
herself, and had taught them to feel, that the work
of life does not consist in merely entering the king-
dom of God, enjoying a comfortable hope of final
salvation, and sitting down at ease, or letting things
drift as they might. No, they know that in coming
out on the Lord's side, they had taken only one step ;
that there was yet a race to run, and a prize to win.
But they were young, and their aims were indefinite,
and for this reason they now sat around their beloved
Mend and teacher, seeking her counsel, listening to
the voice of her experience.

They had been associated together thus from early
childhood, hence much of the reserve and shyness
under which young people suffer had gradually dis-

1 88 " ON THE BANKS OF THE EIVEB OF UFK"

appeared. And Miss Graham was so very much in
earnest that they had caught an inspiration from her,
and in various degrees were in earnest too.

" People say/' remarked Agnes W., " that it is not
necessary to be so very strict, and try to be so very
good. Even the saints have to be saved through
Christ, just like the worst sinners ; and one is not
more sure of getting to heaven at last than another.
I never know how to answer them when they say
such things."

Miss Graham smiled.

" Let us take up one thing at a time," she said.
" In the first place, is getting to heaven the great
work of life?"

" I always thought it was," said one.

" So did I," declared a second.

" We shall have to go back to our Catechism,"
continued Miss Graham. " We are taught there tLiat
* man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him
for ever.' To enjoy Him is subordinate to glorify-
ing Him. Now, who best fulfils the object of his
existence — ^he who loves God just enough to furnish
him with a faint hope that he shall be finally saved,
or he who loves Him so amply, so generously, that
he is far more intent on finding out ways in which
his devotion may give itseK expression, than in asking
the question, * Have I been bom again ? — on how
little love and faith can I be saved ? ' "

•'ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER OF UFE." 189

There was silence for some minutes, as the young
people pondered the thought thus suggested.

**And now for another point," proceeded Miss
Graham. ** What proof has the worst sinner that he
is in a state of grace, if he huUds his hope of salva-
tion on the fact that he once passed through certain
exercises which he, at the time, believed — or rather
hoped than believed — ^resulted in his conversion
to God ? The Bible says, * By their fruits ye shall
know them,' and the best fruit of regeneration is
sanctification."

" Oh, I see it now," said Agnes, in a tone of re-
lief and pleasure. " But I have another difficulty.
After every conversation with you, and almost every
Sunday when I have heard a particularly stirring
sermon, I resolve that I will lead a better life. I
seem, to myself, *to be truly in earnest : but by
Monday, or at farthest by Tuesday, I have fallen
back again."

" By the time you are as old as I am, you will
find that good resolutions are little less than fal*
lacies. They pacify the conscience, and help it over
the ground somewhat as crutches help a lame man."

" But the lame man gets over the ground, even
though he has to hobble over it," objected Mary H.

"But suppose he has a friend powerful enough,
and kind enough, to carry him wherever he wants
to go, is he wise in rejecting his aid, and in saying,

1 90 "ON THE BANKS OP THE RIVER OF MFE."

* You may help me, but my crutches will help me
too'?"

The girls were silent, not seeing the drift of the
remark.

" I compare you, Agnes," continued Miss Graham,
'' to a lame man, who wants to get over a certain
piece of ground, but does it spasmodically, and on
crutches. But he falls back from his progress, and
is continually starting afresh, or having new crutches
made, and ignores the fact that if he would yield to
the solicitations of his friend, he need never halt,
or fall back, or need any other support."

" Do you mean that God is such a friend ? " asked
Agnes.

"Yes. And if, instead of resolving to go on
valiantly yourself, you remember that you have
always failed and come short of your own best pur-
poses, and let Him sanctify you, instead of trying
to sanctify yourself, you will have learned one of
the great lessons of life. Our sanctification is His
will, and it is He who worketh in us to do His
good pleasure."

" Then I do not see that there is anything for us
to do, but just sit and wait to see what God will do
with us. Isn't that fatalism ? "

" Suppose you had no reason to believe that your
soul was safe, but was, at this moment, liable to be
for ever lost, what would you do ? "

C€

ON THE BANKS OF THE KIVEB OF LIFB." I9I

** I would go the Cross, and if I perished, perish
only there," was the vehement reply.

" And why not go to the Cross for sanctification,
as you once did for salvation ? When the children
of Israel were told to look at the brazen serpent,
they were not taught that there was any merit in
their obedience ; but still, they were saved by faitL
Now, suppose the next time you have a new desire
for a holier life, instead of saying, ' Well, I resolve
to begin anew this day,' you say, * Lord, I thank
Thee for putting this desire into my heart ; it did
not originate with me : it is Thy gift But give me
yet more. I cannot make myself what I desire to
be ; then condescend to make me such.' "

For some moments no one uttered a word. When
the Holy Spirit speaks, man keeps silence. And
this Spirit was now brooding over every youthful
heart, solemnising, and ready to sanctify it.

"There is another thing that puzzles me," said
one who had not yet spoken. '' It is the different
creeds held by good people. Why isn't truth made
80 dear that everybody wUl see it alike ? Now, I
have an aunt who says she knows she is old--
fashioned, but that she believes nobody is made holy
except through tribulation. She has had a great
deal of trouble herself, and says she thanks God for
it, eveiy day, because it explains life to her. But
when she talks that way, I shrink back, and feel

192 '' ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVEK OF LIFE."

that I never coiQd bear such afflictions as she has
had. Then my mother never says much about trials.
She is one of the sunshiny sort, always comfortable
and pleasant. I don't see but she is as good as my
aunt, but she has never had things go wrong with
her. She says the good things of life were given us
for our enjoyment, and that we honour God by en-
joying them."

" So we may and do, as long as He gives them.
But they are to be enjoyed in moderation. As long
as we are rich and increased in goods, we are
tempted to rest in them, and to seek nothing
higher. But God leads His children in varied ways.
He sees that one vrUl not come to Him till He has
taken away everything in which he delights. He
shows His love, then, by taking away or marring the
idols that would otherwise ruin the soul, and in this
He does welL

"He has another child whom His gifts draw
nearer to Himself in love and gratitude ; therefore
He can afford to treat him with lavish indulgence."

"But these people who claim that they grow
perfect in a minute ; what do you think of them,
Miss Graham ? "

" I know of no persons who make such profes-
sions," was the reply.

Several voices eagerly assured her that they did.

"We will not judge them," said Miss Graham.

*• ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVEK OF LIFE." I93

" If they have had an experience that we have not,
we are not in a position to condemn it, for we
know not of what we speak But of one thing we
may be sure : God just as seriously calls us to holi-
ness as He does to regeneration. He does it in His
Word, He does it by His providences, He does it by
His Holy Spirit. And the result is that a great
many of His children are longing to respond to His
claims, and a great many others are preaching and
praying and writing books axid tracts and letters,
instructing those who are seeking righteousness in
what they consider the right way. But these human
guides are all fallible. God's secret remains with
Himself. But He will reveal it to all who ask in
faith. My own opinion — I give it for what it is
worth — ^is, that while we are led by the Spirit of
(Jod, it is by diversities of operation."

** But wouldn't it be delightful," said Agnes, " to
be made holy at once, instead of living a whole life-
time of conflict and dismay ? For my part, I feel as
if I could not wait another day. I go to all the
meetings where this doctrine is advocated, and
keep hoping that it will be made clearer to me. It
makes me perfectly miserable when I do anything
wrong. Yes, perfectly miserable. And these people
say there is no need of being miserable."

" Nor do I think so, either, my dear Agnes. Our
misery is quite as often wounded, defeated self-love,

N

194 " ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVEB OF LIFE."

as genuine repentance; perhaps oftener. Eepent-
ance makes us leave off sinning, or when we fall into
it, at once makes us forsake it and fly in humble
confession to the cross."

''But some people claim to have made such
attainments in grace that they never sin."

" I do not like that word attainments. It sounds
as if a Christian could lay up a stock of grace to
which he could resort in an emergency and supply
himself at pleasure. But the truth is, we are all
want and weakness ; God is all grace and strength.
We can, of ourselves, do nothing aright. * As the
eyes of a maiden look unto the hand of her mistress,
so must our eyes be continually turned to Christ
And He is our peace. Ko one who possesses Him
ought to be miserable ! "

" Not if he is living in sin ? "

" He who possesses Christ does not live in sin.
His sinful nature remains, but the indwelling Christ
controls it just in proportion to the hold He has
there."

" But I often get angry," objected Agnes, " and I
see good people guilty of such faults every day. Is
there no remedy ? Must it always go on so ? "

" There is a remedy, and that is Christ. The more
perfectly He dwells in the soul by faith, the more
sm will be crowded out by His divine presenca
Try it, my dear girls. Let Him come and take up

" ONlTHE BANKS OF THE RIVER OF LIFE." 1 95

His abode in you, and then see how peaceful, how
happy, you will be ! "

" I ivill try it ! " said Agnes fervently.

" And so will 1 1 so will 1 1 " added other voices.

'' Miss Graham, are you sure this blessing is for
everybody ? " asked one, more timid than the rest.
" I have desired it above everything else on earth ;
have desired to be wholly the Lord's, but I am
not."

" Let me read to you what I believe to be the
truth," said Miss Graham, taking a book from her
table, "and you will perhaps find encouragement
in these earnest words —

" * You may now understand when it is that you
may regard yourself as standing upon the very banks
of the river of life, when God is about to become
the everlasting light of your souL It is when, and
only when, you have such a quenchless thirst for
God, for holiness and the indwelling of the presence
of Christ in your heart, that nothing else will satisfy
you or divert your thoughts or desire from this one
infinite good, and when your whole being is centred
in the immutable purpose to attain it. Are you in
this state ? Then lift up your head ; your redemption
draweth nigh/ "

Miss Graham closed and laid aside the book, and
for a time nothing was heard but the ticking of
the clock and the far-off sounds of city life. The

196 " ON THE BANKS OF THE BIVEE OF UFK"

ardent, impetuous Agnes was at length the first
to speak.

"Miss Graham," she said, "do you believe any-
body on earth feels that way ? "

" I know that many do," was the reply.

" And how did they get there ? "

" Some by one path, and some by another ; but
of each individual soul it may be said, ' Behold, he
prayeth.' God gives us the spiritual gifts we ask
for, and we certainly may ask Him to enlarge our
desires and to intensify our longings after Himself.
I will not say that He calls every soul to such an
experience as that I have just read to you, but I
do say that He calls each of you to it through me.
He has committed the care of your souls in a great
degree to me ; I have prayed for you each, by name,
day after day, year after year. I may not live to
see these prayers answered, but I believe that each
of you will become, sooner or later, wholly conse-
crated to God."

" I hope so, I hope so," said Agnes ; " but yet I
almost dread it. I see so many things God will
have to take away first. And I do cling so to those
Hove!"

"He always gives a great deal more than He
takes away. Try to trust Him, dear child."

" I do trust Him to a degree ; but it is so much

^ ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER OF LIFE." 1 97

easier to love friends whose words and looks and
tones assure us of their affection, than an invisible
Being about whose friendship one's imperfections
make one doubt."

" Yet here is the voice of experience," said Miss
Graham ; " the testimony of one who has found in
God the near and personal Friend she needs —

tt

' So near, so very near to Grod,

Nearer I cannot be.
For in the person of His Son

I am as near as He.
So dear, so very dear to God,

Dearer I cannot be ;
The love with which He loves His Son,

Such is His love for me.'

" Surely to attain such a sense of nearness and
deamess to God, it is worth while to give up every
earthly idoL"

" I hope He will help me do it ! " was the aspira-
tion of each heart, as the little group now broke
up, and fathers and brothers came to escort their
dear ones home.

And as long as they lived they never forgot that
evening and the prophetic words of their beloved
friend. For they were her last words to them on
earth. A few days later a brief illness became the
messenger to call her home to her reward; they
caught her mantle as it fell, and now, scattered up

igS *'0N THE BANES OF THE RIVER OF LIFE.**

and down in our own and in foreign lands, as wives,
as mothers, as missionaries, twelve devoted women
are living saintly lives, and knowing, in their own
blessed experience, what is that " peace of God,
that passeth all understanding." Could life give
more?

A MODEL SERVANT.

( 201 )

A MODEL SERVANT.

" When I was a stripling," said an old man to a
company of young people, " I was visiting a friend.
After a few days I said to him, 'Everything in this
house seems to go on like clock-work, and you are,
apparently, free from care. How is it ? '

" He replied, * Have I never spoken to you of my
faithful servant. Job ? '

" ' Never.'

" * Then I must do so now. I picked him up at
a street comer. He was a miserable object, all rags
and squalor. I pitied him, and asked him why he
was lounging there, instead of going to work and
making a man of himself ? He replied that he could
not get work, that he had no home, and that mine
was the first kind word he had ever heard. This
moved my compassion yet more. I said to him —

" * Have you ever been at service ? '

" He hung his head and replied, * Yes, I have
served a hard master all my life. He promised me
good wages and kind treatment. But he never
gave me either ; and at last I left him. But in my

202 A MODEL SERVANT.

ragged, filthy state no one will give me work, and I
am perishing with hunger and cold.*

" My heart yearned over him, and I told him so.
Then I said, 'Suppose I take you into my house,
clothe and feed you, and give you good wages, will
you serve me faithfully ? '

"He said, 'I am a miserable, good-for-nothing
fellow; I don't dare to make any promises. Will
you try me ? '

" So, with tears in his eyes, he followed me home.
I took off his rags, clothed him afresh, and set him
to work. He had been serving a bad master so
long, that at first I had to watch him closely to see
if evil habits did not still cling to him. And he
was at that time awkward and inexperienced, and
made frequent mistakes. But every morning he
came to me to beg for minute directions about the
day's work ; every night he confessed any fault or
failure of which he had been guilty, and entreated
forgiveness. And when most busy about his tasks,
if he caught my eye, he invariably gave me a look
that said he loved the labour for the master's sake ? "

" He was probably one of your active sort, who
are never so happy as when hard at work."

" Not at alL He was naturally indolent."

" He was fond of money, then."

" Not at alL He refused to take any wages
beyond what was needed for his support And as

A MODEL SEBVAHT. 203

he became more and more valuable, he was sought
by unscrupulous persons, who would fain have his
services at any price. But he steadily le&ised them
alL"

" Excuse the query : do you not find it necessary
to keep your peculiar hold upon him by flattery ? "

" I am ^lad you asked that question. 1 reply.

emphatically, Wo. From the outset I have loved,
but never spared him. I have enlarged ou his mis-
takes, reproved his faults."

" Oh, you allow that he has faults, then ? "
"Certainly. He is a human being. But for
many years he has never mlfvXly done anything
amiss. My word is law to birn . Kp matter bow

204 ^ MODEL SERVANT.

distasteful the service I require, he always renders
it cheerfully. I have other good servants, as ser-
vants go ; but they all like to have their own way,
and when they can secure it undetected, they da
But my faithful Job's will is to do mine. And
finding him thus faithful in the menial tasks to
which I at first appointed him, I have gradually
promoted him to be ruler over a large portion of my
estates."

" Does not this excite the envy of his fellow-
servants ? "

" Of course it does. But that evil is incident to
every earthly position of trust and honour, and it
will not hurt him to be thus continually reminded
that he is living in a world where the evil spirit
ever dogs the footsteps of the good angeL"

*' Does his elevation never fill him with conceit ?*

" I have seen, with regret, that at times this danger-
ous temper did beset him. Being assured so often
by different members of my family that he is beloved
and cherished and trusted to a marvellous degree, he
gets a fleeting notion that on the whole he is a model
man. At such moments, however, I have only to
point out the exceeding unloveliness of this self-
consciousness and self-applause, to bring him down
into the dust. Once or twice I have reminded him
of what he was in ignorance and worthlessness and
rags before this house became his home. This quickly

A MODEL SERVANT. 205

brought penitent tears to his eyes ; and now he often
comes to me and begs me not to spare him if I see
him unduly exalted, but to humble him by putting
him into a lower position. Only yesterday he said
to me, * Smite me, it shall be a kindness ! ' "

" You think, then, that he is not working with
such scrupulous fidelity to win the favour and ap-
probation of lookers-on, but out of simple love and
gratitude to you ? "

" Undoubtedly. Since he entered my family, we
have had a great deal of sickness. Now after his
hard day's work — for I acknowledge that I keep him
busy through every working hour — he might natu-
rally say, * I am not living here as nurse, and am
entitled to my night's rest.' On the contrary, he
will not sleep while another wakes. Without ostenta-
tion, and as if it were a matter of course, he watches
by every sick-bed in pure self-forgetfulness. This
is literally a service of love ; no money can pay for
it."

" That is true. How long has he been with you ? "

"Many years. I really think he makes no
distinction between his interests and my own. All
he wants to make him happy is something to do for
me or mine. And his love for my children is only
secondary to his love for me. The younger ones
have trespassed on this sentiment, and at times made
a perfect slave of him."

206 A MODEL SERVANT.

" Do you feel justified in keeping such a treasure
all to yourself? Is he not above his position?
Ought he not to fill some high, public ofBice ? "

*' He has had such offered him. He could have
more ease and leisure, far more human applause,
should he accept offices almost thrust upon him.
At one time the temptation was very great. He
laid the case before me, and asked me to decide for
him. But I did not give free expression to my
opinion. I wanted him to act as a free agent. I
felt that he was worthy of all that was offered him,
but that an elevated position would bring with it
new and powerful temptations. At last he came-
to me and said that he would rather fiU a little
space near, than a large one remote from me, and
must stay where he was.'*

" That must have touched you."

" It touched, but did not surprise me. It was
like the man."

" What would be the effect upon him, should you,
arbitrarily, as it would seem, reduce him to the
menial position he occupied at first ? "

" When I took him into my service, my design
was not merely to secure my own comfort. I loved
him, and wanted to make a true man of him. To
this end I kept him under discipline. Sometimes
I made of him a mere household drudge, as if that
were all he was fit for. Then I would exalt him and

A MODEL SERVANT. 20/

set Mm above his fellows. He would look surprised,
perhaps, but never displeasd, when abased ; and as
I have said before, I never saw any elation that was
not transient."

All this interested me, and I determined to watch
this remarkable man, of whom it might be asked,
** Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is
none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, that escheweth evil?" The first thing I
observed was a constant study of his master's face,
as if he woidd read there the wish not yet expressed.
Tina seemed to have become such a habit as to be
like a second nature. And this was no youthful
infatuation, for he was now past his prime, almost
an old man. Every look, every act, said plainly,
" I belong, not to myself, but to my master ; my time,
my strength are his." Then when an order was
given, he obeyed promptly, yet without servility.
There was nobility in his very subservience, for he
rendered service freely and with a cheerful whole-
heartedness that was pleasant to behold.

Again, I noticed his reverent demeanour to the
visitors of the house. When I entered the room
set apart for his use, where he retired to attend to
the business devolving on him when other household
tasks were finished, he rose from his desk and stood
respectfully before me as he did before his master.

208 A MODEL SERVANT.

I said to him, " Keep your seat. Job, I have only
come to ask a question or two.''

He replied gently, but decidedly, " I stand before
my master's guest."

''But you are a good deal older than I, and
besides I am interrupting you."

" My master's guest has a right to interrupt me,"
he returned. But as I turned to go, he eagerly
pursued his work with the old air of " I am not my
own.

A little later some one spoke slightingly of his
master. It touched him to the quick, and he re-
proved the speaker with dignity and propriety, but
with a good deal of spirit. Yet when himself re-
proved, he bore the rebuke in silence, making no
attempt to defend himsell

" How is this. Job ? " I asked ; " can you bear to
be reviled yourself, while you cannot bear to hear a
slighting word about your master ? "

He looked at me in surprise.

" Perhaps you do not know how good he is," he
said ; and after a pause, " how bad I was when he
took me in."

I was struck, too, with his fidelity in little things,
though entrusted with the charge of great ones.
Everything was done thoroughly and done at the
right time. There was no procrastination, no idling,
no putting his own duty on another man's shoulders.

A MODEL SERVANT. 209

And when perfonning a homely task he sang
cheerily at his work, just as he did when nobler
ones were assigned him.

I heard it said to him, " Job, yon are laying up
nothing against your old age. How is that ? "

" You don't know my master ! If you did, you
would not ask such a question," he cried.

"He certainly makes you work very hard for
very poor wages."

" He does not make me work. I work of my
own free will. And I have wages that you know
not of."

" But you are fitted for a position of high trust
and usefulness. Why does he not give you
one ? "

" He gives me just what is best for me, and I
like it because he gives it. I had rather work hard
for him and with him in a garret, than have all
the world can give in a palace without him."

" You are a foolish enthusiast. What has your
master done that you should forsake all else and
cleave only to him ? "

" Don't you know ? Then let me tell you. I
was bound to a bad master, and the first thing I can
remember was trying to do all he bid me do, and
always getting into mischief and trouble by it. He
was a hard master, and do what I could, there was

2IO A MODEL SEBYAKT.

no pleasing him. He fed me on husks and clothed
me with rags. He made me swear and lie land
steal He was always making promises and always
breaking them. I got so that I was little better
than a beast^ ignorant^ foolish, filthy, so that no
decent person would take me into his housQ. And
one day I was standing in the street, wretched and
lonely, everybody treating me as if I had the leprosy,
and a man came along and gave me a look of love
and pity! Yes, you may well wonder. I never
expect to stop wondering if •! live for ever. And he
took me home with him just as I was, washed me,
clothed me, fed me, and gave me what little work
my awkward hands could do. I was lazy and did
as little as I possibly could, and that only when I
knew he was watching me. I wasted his time and
wasted his food, and when he put work on me I did
not like, I complained. And when he invited guests
to the house whom I had to wait on, I was secretly
ungracious to them, not realising that caring for
them was caring for him. But I loved him, and,
stranger still, he loved me, and was never impatient
with me, but bore with all my faults, encouraging
me to think I should some time get rid of them.
The more I saw of him, the more I saw how good
he was, and the faint little love I had at first began
to grow into a great fire, that ate up my old, hateful
ways. Once I got sick by giving way to my

A MODEL SERVANT. 211

greedy appetite, and he took care of me just as if I
had been one of his own children. Another time I
was in great trouble ; we poor folks have got hearts
just like yours, and they can ache just as hard. I
was a young fellow then, and I loved a girl, and
she died. Some of my fellow-servants laughed at
me for making such an ado. But my master came
all the way up four flights of stairs and said, * Job,
my poor fellow, this is very hard for you. I am
sorry for you. Cry away, it will do you good. And
you know I shall always be a true and faithful
friend to you.' I thought I knew him before that,
but I didn't My mind was so distracted with my
trouble that I neglected my work, and blundered
over it, but he never reproached me once, but kept
right on pitying me and giving me kind, tender looks
that melted me all down. Since then it has been
easy to work for him ; all I wish is that I had t&a
hands and ten feet, and could do ten times aa much
for him as I do now."

* Still, you are nothing but a servant, and in aU
these years you have been preparing for something
higher."

** I reckon I shall get higher when the time comes^
but it hasn't come yet, for my master has never said,
' Job, go up higher.' He's always said, * (Jo, if you
think best, but it's safer to obey than to govern,'
and ' he that is low need fear no fall' "

212 A MODEL SERVANT.

While we listened and marvelled, this beloved
servant was suddenly stricken down. His faithful
feet would no longer bear him to the post of duty ;
his busy hands were paralysed and helpless. At
first his uselessness tried him sorely. His intense
love for his master had not nearly spent itself; he
longed for work, more work, and lay and thought of
a thousand things he fancied he might have done.
He groaned aloud and bemoaned himself on his
bed.

At last his master said to him, ** Job, you have
often been called to come up higher, and now you
have come. SufiPering is a nobler vocation than
work, when one is ordained to it I utter no com-
plaint that you can no longer serve me ; if you lie
here in silent patience, not complaining that you
cannot do the work I do not require, you are still
doing my good pleasure. I did not take you into
my house in order to get all I could out of you ; I
gave you work to do that would check your sloth-
fulnesS) develop your fidelity, and be the channel in
which your love could safely flow. Suffering is your
servitude now ; it is your master, and you owe to
it the humble obedience you have hitherto rendered
me. I want nothing better than to see you as
faithful to its claims as you have been to mine."

"I will be faithful," murmured the trembling lips.

A MODEL SERVAKT. 213

* And, master, if I can't work for you, I can love
you, and so I will ! "

All this happened, as I have said, in the days of
my youth, and ever since I have been seriously
pondering the question, Am I such a servant to my
Master?

PLAYING AA^ITH SUNBEAMS

( 217 )

PL A YING WITH SUNBEAMS.

There is a story told of a little child sitting on its
nursery floor, playing with a sunbeam that lay
athwart the carpet. Now he would try to catch it
in his fingers, and laugh merrily at each failure ;
now he would bathe his little hands in its warmth
and brightness, and then clasp them for joy.

Now we meet, sometimes, though not often, with
charming grown-up children, who can be happy in
the enjoyment of the intangible, when the tangible
is wanting. They are the opposites of those char-
acters of whom it has been said, that it takes more
than everything to make them happy, less than
nothing to make them miserable.

Mary Arnold had grown up in an unusually
happy home ; she never remembered hearing an
unkindly word there.

From this home she passed, when quite young,
into one of her own, which promised her all the
luxuries to which she had been accustomed. But
her husband met with heavy losses just as he had
won his bride, and she was obliged to live in a

2l8 PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS.

humble style hitherto unknown to her. He thought
he knew what a sweet spuit she possessed, when
the day of prosperity shone for her without a doud.
But he was astonished and cheered when adversity
revealed her true character.

" It is going to be very hard for you, my poor
child," he said to her, " to descend with, me into all
sorts of petty economies, to which you have never
been used. This is the trjdng part of these financial
difficulties ; I do not care so much for myself"
" We shall see," she returned, with a smila
" It is easy to smile in advance," he said, in reply
to the smile. " But you do not know what it is
going to be to you."

It is true, she did not know. She had now to do
with her own hands what she had had 6ther hands
to do for her ; must make a very little money go a
great way ; must do without luxuries ; in short, must
have that grim and unpleasing master, Economy, sit
with her at her table, reign in her kitchen, preside
over her wardrobe, and become general Master of
Ceremonies. But her friends found her unchanged
by circumstances. When they condoled with her,
she would reply —

" But think what a kind husband I have ! "
And she played with this sunbeam, and made her-
self glad with it, and was so genuinely happy, that
it was a refreshment to meet her.

PIAYING WITH SUNBEAMS.

219

"But it will not last," said the ravens. "By
and by, when she baa childreD, and must clothe and
feed and educate thsm, we shall have a new tune."

Well, the children came, and she had not a
moment of leisure. She had to be niirse and
seamstress, never got " her afternoon out," never
had her work all done and out of the way ; she waa

indnsbioos, and airangad her time wisely ; but she
coold not work miracles. She felt, a great deal of
the time, like a straw borne hither and thither by
the wind ; she could not choose what she would do
at such a time, but was forced to tasks, with no
room for her own volition.

" Kow, then," quoth the ravens, " we shall hear

220 PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS.

you complain. You have to work like a day-
labourer, and see what miserable wages you get ! "

" Miserable wages ! " she cried, " why, I don't
know anybody so rich as I am. With such a
husband, and such children, and such friends, I am
as happy as the day is long ! "

" You have a great deal of leisure for your friends,
to be sure."

" Well, I should like to see more of them, it is
true. And, by and by, when the children are older,
I shall"

" By that time you will be so old yourself, that
your heart will have grown cold."

" Oh no ; it is too busy to grow cold."

So she made sunbeams out of her daily, home-
spun tasks, and went on her way, rejoicing.

The ravens were puzzled.

" It must be her perfect health," they whispered
to each other.

Time passed ; the children grew up, and just as
the long-needed prosperity began to flow into the
house, the young people began to pass out of it into
homes of their own, till father and mother sat at
their table alone.

" Now you have spent nearly a lifetime in toil-
ing for your children, and what is the good of it all ?
As soon as they get old enough to be a comfort to
you, they every one of them go oflf and leave you."

PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS. 221

So said the ravens.

" Just what I did at their age ! " she replied
cheerily. "Why shouldn't they get married, as
well as I ? And instead of losing, I have gained
children. Whereas I had only six, I have now
twelve. And I have plenty of time now to see
my friends, to read, to take journeys, and to enjoy
my husband."

But now long, long days of ill-health came and
laid leaden hands upon her. She had twelve chil-
dren, but they were scattered far and wide, and could
only come occasionally, to make her brief visits.

" Very hard ! " said the ravens.

*• Oh no ! It is such a delight to me that they
all got away before this illness overtook me. It
would have cast such a gloom upon them to be at
home and miss * mother ' from the table."

" But the time is so long ! What a sad pity that
you are not allowed to use your eyes ! "

" Oh, do you think so ? I was just thanking
God that in my days of youth and health, I learned
so many passages in the Bible, and so many hymns.
I lie here repeating them over, and they are like
honey to my taste."

" At all events, it would be a good thing if you
could see your friends more."

" I do see them, in imagination. I call in now
this one, now that ; and make him or her repeat the

222 PULYING WITH SUNBEAMS.

pleasant, afifectionate words they used to speak. I
am never lonely. And I have other delightful
things to think of; books I have read, sermons I
have heard, little kindnesses shown me by some
who are in heaven now. Sometimes I wonder why,
when others are so afiUcted, I am passed by."

"Have you forgotten that you have wept over
little graves ? "

" No ; I have not forgotten. I lie and think of
all the winsome ways my little ones had, and how
tenderly the Good Shepherd took them away in His
arms. They might have lived to suffer, or what
is far, far worse, to sin. I can't help rejoicing that
three of my chHdren are safe and happy. So many
parents have ungrateful, wild soii and foolish,
worldly daughters."

" Is it no trial to lie here, bound as it were, hand
and foot, and often racked with pain ? "

" It would be a great trial if I had not such a
devoted husband, and if he were not able to get for
me everything that can alleviate my condition. But
you see I have not a wish ungratified. Think what
a delightful room this is ! In the summer-time,
when the windows are open, I can hear the birds
sing, and the voices of little children at their play.
In the winter the sun shines in ; that cheers me."

" The sun doesn't shine every day."

" No ; and that is a mercy, because it is so wel-

PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS. 223

joine after absence. On cloudy days I think over
the sunny .ones, and remind myself that clouds never
last for ever.' It is said that ' the saddest birds find
lime to sing/ and it's true. Nobody is sad all the
time, or sufifering all the time."

" You are in the prime of life ; others of your age
axe at work in the Master's vineyard. Doesn't it
pain you that you are doing nothing for Him ? "

" It did, at one tima I said, all I'm good for is
to make trouble for other people, and use up my
husband's money. But it was made plain to me
that 'they also serve who only stand and wait.*
It might be nothing but a cold, flat stoiue in a side-
walky made to be trodden on, and fit for nothing
else. But if the Master's hand put me there, I ought
not to complain that He did not let me form a
part of a palace instead. We can't all be servants ;
some of us have got to be served ; and I am one of
them."

" Do you expect to get well ? "

" My physicians do not teU me what to expect
I know that I may live many years; but I also
know that I may be called away at any moment."

" How dreadful ! Such a life of suspense ! "

" I am quite used to it now. At first, I did not
know how to act when I found I might die at any
moment But afterwards I reflected that this is true
of every human being. I do not expect to do any-

224 PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS.

thing it would not be fitting to do, just when the
summons came. And it is very sweet ,to think that
I may get my invitation and go, without the grief and
commotion my death would have occasioned when
my children were all young and needed me."

" But your husband — could you bear to go and
leave him alone ? "

'' My husband is older than I, and I hope he may
go first. God has always been so good to us, that
I think He wm."

" But you could not do without him. Tou would
be left entirely alone."

" Yes. But whenever my heart ached, I could
remind myself that it was my heart, not his, and
rejoice that he was spared this suffering. You see,
everythiDg has its good side."

By this time the ravens were exhausted, and flew
away.

And now let us see whether this faithful suflferer
was doing no work in the great vineyard.

Here are six homes where she is quoted every day,
almost every hour. Her children have all learned
her song as she used to sing it to them in their nest,
and they are teaching it to theirs. Cheerful endur-
ance lights up and beautifies every life. And the
influences going forth from these lives are beyond
computation. And here are friends who love her
only less than her husband and children do; who

PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS. 22$

have watched her all her life long, and have borne
the burden and heat of the day, in humble imitation
of the: patience with which she bore hers. They
have never heard a murmuring word fall from her
lips. They have always heard her wonder what made
GU)d so good to hei ; wonder that, full of discipline
as her life was, she had so few trouUes* And they
have gone away rebuked, with lessons impressed on
their memories that should bear fruit sh& might never
see, but should be refreshing in eyeiy weary day.
And those who were with hpr when, death stole away
three cherubs from her heart, knew that it was not
stoicism that made her refuse to. complain, but thank
God that she.had had them, for a season, enjoyed them
while they were hers, and could feel that they were
safer, happfer with Him than they were with her.
Yes, wheiD^ she wept over the little graves, she caught
sunbeams even then, and said, *' Though He slay me,
yet will I tfTust in Him ! "

The truth is, our own hands have more to do with
shaping our lives than we fancy. We cannot con-
trol Providences, nor ought we to wish to do s6.
But we call be willing to see the silver lining to, the
doud, to " nurse the caged sorrow till the captive
sings," to count up our mercies through those dark
days when th^ i^ain falls and is never wea;ry> know-
ing that it n^ver rains always

P

226 PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS.

And now let us go back to the sick-room, which,
to its patient occupant, has so long been a prison.

She has grown old, and her strength has greatly
declined. She cannot talk much now, and no
longer hears earthly voices. But she knows what
our eyes say to her when our tongues are silent

" Yes, I knew you would come to me as soon as
you heard of it; so kind of you. Everybody is
kind. I wish I had strength to tell you all about
it. We had lived together fifty years. He died on
our golden wedding-day. He had been unusually
well, and we had laughed together over our young
married life. The children were all here with their
children ; the housfe was like a beehive, every bee
humming. He said it renewed lus youth to see
them ; I'm sure it did mine. Well, they all as-
sembled here in this room, and the children gave
us their presents. Their father told them aU about
our wedding-day so long ago, and every time he
stopped talking, to rest a little, I said, * Every mile-
stone on our journey marks a mercy ; there's a new
one. And it will be so to the end.' Father smiled ;
for you know I couldn't hear a word he said, but I
always did say I had mercies when other people
had miseries. At last he had said all he had to
say, and Eobert — ^you know my Eobert is a minis-
ter? — Eobert knelt down, with his brothers and
sisters and the children about him, to pray. Father

PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS. 22/

knelt just here by my side, with my hand in his.
It was a solemn time. I was with them in spirit,
though I could not hear. But when they rose from
their knees, father kept on his. We waited a little
while, and then Bobert and Edgar went and lifted
him up. Well, I thought it would be thus ! GUxi
was always so good to us; he'd slipped away so
gently that nobody heard him go.

" Don't grieVe for me. The parting will not be
for long. My old feet will soon go tottering after.
(3od is keeping me here a little longer to give me
time to tell my friends all about this crowning
mercy, and then I shall go. It has been a great
shaking ; but I think I could hardly have borne to
go and leave him alone."

As she falters forth these words, slowly and at
intervals, her children and a few dear friends stand-
ing about her watching the smile that mingles with
her tears ; a sunbeam darted suddenly into the room
and lay, a line of golden light, across the bed. She
laid her cold hands in it, in the tender way in which
she would clasp that of a friend, and said —

" I've had nothing but mercies all the days of my
life."

And so she passed painlessly away, " playing with
sunbeams" to the la3t.

SAVED FROM HIS
FRIENDS.

1

( 231 )

SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS.

In travelling the streets of a great city like our
own, how often our silent thoughts busy themselves
with the throngs we meet, or rather, with the
individuals who make the multitude. "Have all
these human beings hxmies ? " we ask. " Is it pos-
sible that this repulsive-looking object is a man,
has friends, is beloved ? And this vapid, simpering
woman — ^is she, perchance, a wife, a mother ? has
she a husband who cherishes her, cMdren who
obey and honour her?" Judged by the common
eye, we should say of most of the human beings we
meet, " How uninteresting they are ! " Yet there
are few who are not interesting to somebody. God
has "set the solitary in families," and in these
contracted circles, at least, there is shelter from the
harsh opinions of the world without. Does it turn
to a man its cold shoulder ? " Well," he retorts,
" my mother, my sister, my wife, think well of me,
nay, love me, and I can do without the rest." This
is the bright side of the question, a merciful side, if
it is not abused. But it has its dangers. Take

232 SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS.

any of us who are luxuriating in the sweet atmo-
sphere of a happy home, where our faults are dealt
with gently, and onr virtues magnified by partial
affection, and we are liable to a subtle self-com-
placency which is abhorrent to God, as it would be
to man could he see it It sounds nicely to say of
ourselves that we don't know what we have done to
deserve the friendship of those we love, and we
fancy ourselves sincere in saying it. But the
moment one of these very friends begins to neglect
us, or to accuse us, we are deeply wounded, and,
instead of asking ourselves whether there may not
be some reason for the change, some just ground for
the accusation, we cry, "You misunderstand mel"
In other words, we declare, " You insinuate that I
am avaricious, but I am really very generous. You
say that I am not conscientious, whereas I am
conscientiousness personified I " And so on to the
end of the chapter.

At first blush it would seem that " mutual ad-
miration societies " were so little the rule, so much
the exception, that neither sermon nor essay warn-
ing against conceit bom of and nursed at home could
be worthy the utterance. But do we not all know
such homes ? If they are weak, they are amiable
in their weakness ; why not let them alone, then,
and spend one's strength in fighting against greater
domestic evils ? Simply because there is a time for

SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS. 233

all things; and that on a certain time, not a hnn-
dred years ago, there entered into a house already
fTill of daughters, a long-coveted son. In the little
circle that now clustered about him he seemed
nothing less than the ninth wonder of the world.
Not only did his parents regard him with the pecu-
liar pride and pleasure that come of hope long
deferred, but every one of his sisters, each after her
kind, fell down before and worshipped him. All
his juvenile words and deeds were chronicled, and
as infancy lapsed into boyhood, and boyhood into
manhood, he became the household star, around
which the whole family revolved. Up to a certain
point it is a good thing for a child, it is good for a
man, to be loved and caressed; but there are limits
to everything. Donald Donaldson was not, natu-
rally, more conceited than the rest of the race ; but
hearing himself constantly eulogised, finding him-
self the object of constant rivalry, each wanting his
attentions and his affections, he began, by slow de-
grees, to imagine himself the very rare specimen of
humanity he was believed to be. In fact, he was not
absolutely common. He had some brilliant talents,
could think well, talk well, and write well ; he was
industrious, and made a good use of his opportuni-
ties ; and there seemed no reason why he should
not make his mark in this world. His sisters took
surreptitious copies of his poems, which they read.

234 SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS.

in secret triumph, to all their bosom friends, who,,
being friends, thought them very wonderful produc-
tions, and begged for the privilege of taking c6pies
likewise Then each of these admirers wanted his
photograph, and with an air of meek reluctance he
presented them right and left, unconscious of the
satisfied pride with which he did so. Miss Ara-
minta Fielding wanted him taken for her in the
attitude she thought so becoming, namely, seated at
his writing-table, absorbed in literary labour, while a
background of admiring sisters, engaged in such
occupations as became the inferior female sex,
enlivened the scene. Miss Arabella Montclair pre-
ferred him reclining on the sofa, with a slight
headache, and hovered over by half a dozen tender
females, each armed with a bottle of cologne. In
fact, she wouldn't have minded being one of the
females herself.

As to the remaining list of gentle friends, the
reader can picture their wishes in his own imagina-
tion. Of course, it was an understood thing in the
family that their hero would take what position in
life he pleased. When, therefore, his first attempt
to climb the ladder failed, when publisher after pub-
lisher declined to accept his first volume of poems,
the whole platoon of sisters fell back in as much
amazement as dismay. They soon, however, reco-
vered from the shock, and rallied round him with

SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS. 23$

sympathising hearts, a holy hatred of publishers, and
wide-open purses. Those beautiful poems should
not be lost to the world because Randolph said they
lacked originality, and Scribner said they wouldn't
sell, and Hurd & Houghton shook both their heads.
At their own expense, they had them printed on
tinted paper, and, of course, each of the admiring
friends bought a copy and induced some of their
friends to do the same. But somehow the public
agreed with the publishers, and the elaborately got-
up volume fell dead.

Donald lost some faith in himself in consequence,
and was in a fair way to make his escape from the
dangerous position into which mistaken friendship
had drawn him. But though not in all points a
weak character, he had one very weak point, and
that was credulity. He believed what his friends
said, and they said that he was the genius of the
family, and that genius was only recognised after its
possessor had departed hence. They posted him up
in all the histories of' tardy justice, and assured him
that years hence his name would be remembered
and honoured.

Of course, his matrimonial future formed an
equally interesting subject of discussion with his
literary career. It was assumed that if there was
any absolutely faultless young lady on earth she
belonged to him.

236 SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS.

" She must be perfectly amiable, of course," said
No. One.

" And bright aud original and witty," quoth No.
Two. " Donald could never bear a stupid wife."

" And a good housekeeper," remarked No. Three.

" Of course," responded No. Four. " And she
must be of a yielding disposition. Dear Donald
likes so to have his own way."

" Yes, and very affectionate. I never could endure
to see him tied to a cold nature," declared No.
Five.

'' Oh, of course, she must be all heart and soul ! **
cried No. Six ecstatically.

'' But prudent, and circumspect, and able to hold
her tongue," suggested No. Seven.

" Certainly," No. Eight assented ; " and very fond
of society, because Donald is so much of a bookworm.
He would have to go out with her if she wanted to
go, you know."

"Do you think so?" demurred No. Nine. "I
think she ought to be domestic and stay at home
with him."

" I don't like women who always stay at home,"
objected No. Two. " They stagnate, and grow fat
and stupid."

" Nobody could stagnate with Donald," said No.
One.

" And we had agreed to have her all heart and

SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS. 237

soul/' said No. Six, " and that being the case, how
could she stagnate, how could she grow fat ? "

Between them all Donald became bewildered.
Instead of falling in love in a good, old-fashioned way,
he went about among young women as middle-aged
females go among sewing-machines. Should it be
a Wheeler & Wilson, or a Orover & Baker, or a
Finkle & Lyon ? And when at last-— every one of
his sisters dissatisfied with his choice — ^he selected
what seemed to him to be the most desirable article
in the market, what was his mortification and wrath
to find himself flatly refused. Once more the sister-
hood fell back in confusion, but once more they
rallied.

"We always said she wasn't half good enough
for you ! " they cried in chorus. ** She would never
have let you say your soul was your own ! "

" We know fifty girls superior to her I And to
think of her refusing you when so many would
snatch at the chance ! "

And they gathered round him closer than ever,
wrote him three-cornered notes, which he found
under his pillow, and among his razors and brushes,
and in all sorts of unexpected, unheard-of places.
One inserted little tracts of a consolatory nature
among the leaves of his Bible ; another illuminated
texts and suspended them from the walls of his
room ; yet a third descended to the kitchen and

238 SAYED FBOM HIS FRIENDS.

compounded for liis broken heart all sorts of good
things, which reached it via his stomach. As to
his mother, she was a good, simple soul, to whom
her children never told their secrets, for the same
reason that one does not try to make an ocean out
of a tea-cup. She went on her way calmly, satisfied
that there never was such a family as hers. Probably
there never was, but that proves nothing.

Time heals all things, and it healed Donald's
wounded affections to such a degree that he resumed
his search for a perfect sewing-machine, aided in all
feminine ways by his sisters, who warned, who coun-
selled, who got up excursions and parties, went with
him to the sea-side and into the mountains, and
were, in turn, guide-posts, beacons, and watch-fires.
He wrote a good many verses about the forlorn state
of his heart, and fancied himself a much-injured man,
while he was faithfully performing the three great
conditions of healthful life — eating and drinking
and sleeping welL But his opinion of his own
worth and consequence grew apace; how could it
be otherwise, when everything he said was ap-
plauded, everything he did admired ? He fell into a
silly habit of counting up his friends and admirers,
and when it occurred to him, as it sometimes did,
that persons so remarkable as himself were apt to
die young, and that this might be his fate, he felt
great compassion for those who should be left to

SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS. 239

moTim Ms loss. He pictured to himself his dying
farewell, his imposing funeral, the tears of the
multitude who should escort his precious remains
to the grave, till he was quite affected and wept
over himself as chief mourner. But he had sense
enough to keep all these thoughts to himself, and,
as he was amiable, agreeable, and pleasing as son,
brother, and Mend, no one found any flaw in him,
especially the gross one of growing self-compla-
cency.

He was approaching his twenty-fifth year, when
the death of his father's elder brother brought inta
the family a number of heirlooms, the most prized
of which were the portrait of " grandma Donaldson, "
and a quantity of manuscript written by that worthy
dame. She had been dead several years, and her
memory was cherished by her surviving relatives
with veneration and pride. She had the tongue of
a ready speaker and the pen of a ready writer;
people would sit by the hour to hear her talk, and
her children thought her a perfect wonder of talent
and of learning. Nevertheless, her papers had
never been carefully read ; they were written in a
very minute, almost iUegible hand ; what was every-
body's business was nobody's, and so a barrel stored
away in the attic held the result of an industrious,
energetic pen. People said, when she died, that
her life ought to be written and her writings

240 SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS.

preserved. Her sons, of whom she had two, thonght
so also. But they were both men of business, were
not cultivated, had inherited none of her talents,
and so, by degrees, she ceased to live, save in their
memories. But now, in arranging affairs, her
grandson, Donald, had stumbled on her long-
neglected papers ; a bright sentence had arrested
his attention, and he had brought home with
him these hidden treasures. Of cours6 everybody
wondered why nobody had attended to this business
before, and said it was jusjb like Donald to think of
it. He thought so too, and, finding himself in such
favour, he coolly appropriated the portrait and had
it at once suspended in his own room. It was
valuable as a picture as well as a portrait ; it re-
presented a woman in the bloom of life, with a boy
on either side, her face fuU of soul, of energy, of
determination, of sound sense, yet with no want of
feminine warmth and gentleness, and was withal the
work of a skilful hand.

'' How extraordinary a resemblance there is be-
tween Donald and grandiiia ! " exclaimed the sisters,
as soon as they saw this portrait.

" Yes, I am a chip of that block," he said to him-
self ; " I look like her, and I am like her ; all I
wish is that she had lived long enough — to see me,"
he was going to add, but checked himself in what

SAVED FBOM HIS FBIENI)& 24 1

he fancied a spirit of deep humility, and substituted,
" to let me see her."

The papers were now transported to his room,
and he proposed to spend his winter evenings in
reading, assorting, transcribing, and destroying them,
as the case might be.

The task proved an agreeable one, yet not of
an immized sort He was proud that this gifted
woman was his relative, but not entirely pleased to
find how much her intellectual tone was his, how
similar were his mind and her own. She had not
had one-tenth part of his opportunities; she had
not had the advantage of foreign travel as he had
done ; she had had domestic cares that would have
consumed the time and the energies of most women,
and yet here was all this work done, and done so
welL

He sat up later than usual one evening, absorbed
in reading, but the yellow and faded papers fell
suddenly from his hand at the sound of a voice just
above his head, in the direction of the portrait
He looked up, and lo ! the lips were moving, the
eyes flashing — *' grandma Donaldson " was speaking !
He could hardly believe his senses ; but he had to
believe them, for this is what he heard —

" Yes, young man, it is just as you see. I was
but a girl, younger than you are now, when I wrote
much of what you are reading. I had fires to make,

Q

242 SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS.

and rooms to sweep, and food to cook ; I had to
bear children and guide the house ; but still I read
and still I wrote. Two or three fond friends would
fain have me believe myself a literary marvel, to
neglect my proper business, and get into print.
But besides my uncommon sense, I had something
far more rare, sound comnum sense. I said to my-
self, ' Don't believe a word they say. You are not
Shakespeare, or John Bunyan, or anybody else, but
just a girl who's got the gift of the gab and likes
to scribble. The instant minute you're dead, thejrTl
hustle all you ever wrote into some old flour-barrel,
and off it will go, up into the attic, and the mice
will make nests of the paper, and there'll be the
end of it' And I wasn't one of the kind that
needed to be spoke to twice that way. My pride
came right down on the spot, and never got up again.
I didn't have a father and mother that thought there
never was anybody like me on earth, nor nine
sisters to puff me up by bowing down to me. My
mother used to say, when I got in a conceited fit,
' It's all very well, child ; no doubt you write things
that sound smart to us ; but we ain't the world, and
most likely there's thousands of people in it you
can't hold a candle to. But there ain't twenty that
can make as good a wife and mother as you can, if
you've a mind to try.* And then she'd put her
arms around me and kiss me, to take off the edge

BAYED FBOM HIS FRIENDS. 243

of what she said, as I would do to yon, if you would
come near enough."

**Do you mean," cried Donald, with a sinking
heart, " that I am to apply your remarks personally
to myself ? That my friends overrate me, and that
I consequently overrate myself ? "

"That is exactly what I mean. You see, my
boy, that the Donaldson intellect, such as it was,
skipped over your father, and descended to you;
but after all, it was no great gift. You must allow
that at your age I wrote as weU as you do, but who
cares for what I wrote ? Who reads it ? I am dead
and buried and forgotten, as you will be, sooner or
later. Perhaps some curious descendant will pore
over your papers as you pore over mine, but it will
all end in smoke, literally in smoke ; for you will
bum these papers, and yours shall be burnt like-
wise."

" You would have me bury my talent, then, be-
cause I have but one ? "

" Not at all ; I would have you do the very best
you can with it, as with the good fortune that makes
you so beloved by your family. Only do it in a
sensible, manly way. And judge yourself not by
the standard of a few partial friends, but by facts
in your past history. They would fain have you
thick yourself undervalued by the public; but if
this were the case, you would, by this time, have

244 SAVED FBOM HIS FBIENDS.

been engaged on some work more worthy than that
of writing love-verses. And then, as to your do-
mestic virtues, what test have they ever had?
Who has thwarted your will ? Who has met you
coldly on your return home ? Who has refused
to nurse you when your head ached? Who has
ever spoken a harsh or aggravating word to you ?
Young man, you do not know yourself, and I have
had to rise from the dead to tell you so."

The head of Donald Donaldson sunk lower and
lower during the delivery of this speech. Its pun-
gent truth sank into his inmost souL A hundred
circimistances, hitherto unnoticed, corroborated all he
had now heard, and he felt himself descending firom
the pinnacle on which he had been placed to his
true level

A new, a tender voice now proceeded from the
portrait.

" My dear boy, it would pain me to wound you
thus, but that I feel that faithful wounding is the
greatest favour that can be shown you. Do not be
discouraged at the new view of yourself you have
attained. You have talent, you are well educated,
you have many good and agreeable qualities. But
when you enter the eternal world, the question will
not be asked, ' Didst thou shine upon earth ? Did
men honour ; did friends love thee ? ' but * Was the
image of the Lord Jesus found in thee ? Didst thou

SATU) TBOH ma FRIENDS. 245

live to honour Him, to Iotq Him, to work for Him ? '
Alas, many who -were first ehall be last, and last
shall he first ! "

As the voice died avay in the sweet, serious cad-
ence, another fell upon hia ear.

" I really believe, Donald, yon have set up read-
ing all night ; here you are, asleep in yonr chair, the

gas burning, the fire out, and yonr face like that of
one who had seen a vision."

Thns spake one of the sisters who had done so
much to spoil him. He started up, rubbed his eyes
and cried——

"Was I reaUyasleep! Then it was all a dream ! "

"What was all a dream?"

" That grandma Donaldson read me a lecture, and
then a short sermon I I declare it eonnded just like

246 SAVED FROM HIS FBIENDS.

her ! That was just the way she talked, as it is just
the way she wrote. No wonder it all seemed so
real Well, you'll find me henceforth a wiser, if not
a sadder man/'

This was all he chose to tell, but from that day
he was indeed a wiser man, for he ceased to be wise
in his own conceit. He performed the work in life
that came to him humbly and faithfully and as to
the Lord, and is doing it stiU.

And he has married a wife whom he dearly loves.

She is not "perfectly amiable," nor "bright, ori-
ginal, and witty," or remarkable as a "good house-
keeper," or very " yielding," or " all heart and soul,"
while, at the same time, "prudent and circumspect,
and able to hold her tongue," nor "very fond of
society," and "domestic," nor has "stagnated, or
grown fat and stupid."

She is simply a nice, good sort of girl, who does
not take fire easily, but can be roused if you treat
her iU ; who knows it if her husband says witty
things, and can laugh heartily at them ; who keeps
house very comfortably ; yields sometimes, and some-
times won't ; has got a heart and a soul, but then
not a little humanity besides ; is prudent and impru-
dent by fits and starts ; likes to go out of an evening,
and is very happy at home. Donald's mother likes
her, and they agree together perfectly. With all the
sisters she has occasional " tif&," which do not amount

SAVED FROM HIS FRIENDS. 247

to much, but show that they axe none of them angels
— just as a blot on one's paper proves that the most
immaculate sheet is not above getting soiled. She
loves Donald far better than his sisters do, but not
blindly, as they wish she did. She sees all his little
weaknesses, iemd now and then gets out of patience
with l^im. And she will not let him litter her rooms
with his papers, as he was brought up to litter all
his mother's. But they get on beautifully together,
in the main; he wouldn't change her for any
"Wheeler & Wilson" on earth, and she wouldn't
give him up to marry a king. And, best of all, if
she does not help him in his work, she never hin-
ders biTn by any selfish claims on his time and atten-
tion. And, as for him, his record will be on high,
and read thus —

" Well done, thou good and faithful servant : enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord."

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